
Book ■ Lv3 . 

Gopight N° 



COFVRIGIIT DEPOSIT. 



THE 

TEACHER'S PRACTICAL 

PHILOSOPHY 



A TREATISE OF EDUCATION AS 
A SPECIES OF CONDUCT 

(Fifteen Lectures) 



BY 

GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD, LL.D. 

Author of " Elements of Physiological Psychology." 

"Psychology Descriptive and Explanatory." 

" Philosophy op Conduct," etc., etc. 




FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 
I9H 









Copyright, 1911, by 

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 

[Printed in the United States of America] 

Published September, 1911 



©Ci.A295424 



PREFACE 

The views set forth in this volume are essentially 
the same as those given to many thousands of 
teachers and others interested in education, in 
Japan, Korea, and Hawaii, during the Academic 
year of 1906-07. Among the Japanese, especially, 
the interest in the moral aspects and values of 
the system of public education was at that time 
intense and pervasive. It embraced not only the 
teachers as a class and the officers of the Govern- 
ment in the Department of Education, but also 
the leaders in the army and navy, in business cir- 
cles, and in civil and social affairs. As instances 
of this interest I might cite the remark of a vet- 
eran of the Russo-Japanese war who declared that 
his principal anxiety in training the nearly thirty 
thousand recruits under his charge was to give 
them the right ''spiritual education;'' and also 
the fact that I was repeatedly urged into giving 
additional courses of lectures on the ethics of busi- 
ness in the Government Commercial Colleges, 
where ethics is made a required subject of study 
through one or two years of the course. 

In this country there has been slowly gathering 
the conviction that our system of education, from 
the public schools of primary graide to the Gradu- 

III 



iv PREFACE 

ale and Professional Schools connected with our 
Universities, has not been productive, as it should 
be, of the right sort of men and women to conduct 
safely and wisely and righteously the affairs of 
Church and State. And there has been of late, 
and there still is, much discussion — some of it 
faultfinding and criminatory — over questions of 
causes and remedies, and over the general problem 
of whether our recent movements have been pro- 
gressive or retrograde. Into this discussion it is 
not the purpose of this book to enter. Its pur- 
pose is, the rather, to emphasize the personal and 
moral elements as those which, broadly understood, 
must be relied upon to secure the needed improve- 
ments, if improvements are needed and are to be 
secured at all. The author believes that the lack 
of discipline, through moral and religious motives 
and in accordance with moral and religious ideals, 
in the home-life, in school and in college, and in 
society at large, is the prime source of all our 
national evils so far as they are connected with the 
educative processes as now in vogue. He also be- 
lieves that these evils are very deep and large at the 
present time, and will be most difficult to cure or 
even greatly to abate under existing conditions 
such as those with which the individual teacher can 
not readily cope. But whether his belief and feel- 
ings of foreboding connected with it are justified 
or not, it can scarcely fail to come true that any 



PREFACE 



earnest and fairly intelligent appeal for added 
attention to the personal elements and the moral 
forces and ideals involved in the very process of 
education will meet with response, equally earnest 
and intelligent, from numbers of the teachers in 
our day and land. And if even a few of those 
belonging to the class of workmen, to whom the 
author has been proud and glad to belong, are 
helped in any way by his words, he will be much 
more than amply rewarded. 

In bringing these thoughts before those inter- 
ested in education in this country, the form of 
spoken lectures has been preserved as best adapted 
for the familiar style in which they were originally 
presented. But, of course, in preparing them 
for an audience in the United States, not only 
much of the details, and of the illustrative mate- 
rial, but no inconsiderable part of more important 
formal matters, has been changed. 

George Trumbull Ladd. 

New Haven, June, 1911. 



CONTENTS 

Lecture pages 

I. Introductory 3— 24 

Part I. 

THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 

II. The Function of the Teacher: As a 

Species of Intercourse between Persons 27— 45 

III. The Function of the Teacher: as Stimu- 

lating Interest 46— 67 

IV. The Function of the Teacher: As Im- 

parting Knowledge 68— 89 

V. The Function of the Teacher : As Training 

Faculty 90—111 

VI. The Function of the Teacher : As Forming 

Character 112-135 

Part II 

THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 

VII. The Equipment of the Teacher: As Self- 

Cultivation 139—158 

VIII. The Equipment of the Teacher : As Growth 

in Knowledge 159-179 

IX. The Equipment of the Teacher: As Right 

Use of Method 180—200 

Part III 

THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 

X. The Chief Ideals of the Teacher: His 

Pupils ' Welfare 203-222 

XI. The Chief Ideals of the Teacher: The 

Cause of Science 223—243 

XII. The Chief Ideals of the Teacher: The Pub- 
lic Welfare 244—264 

VII 



CONTENTS 



Part IV 

THE TEACHEE'S EELATION TO SOCIETY AND 
THE STATE 

XIII. The Development of Society: Dependent 

on Education 267—287 

XIV. The National Stability and Progress: De- 

pendent on Education 288—308 

XV. The Teacher's Practical Philosophy: Sum- 
mary and Conclusion 309—331 



THE TEACHER'S 
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 



LECTURE I 

INTRODUCTORY 

Fellow Teachers: 

Before we begin our study of the particular 
topics, to which I shall invite your attention in 
this course of lectures, it seems desirable that we 
should form a clear conception of the general sub- 
ject to be considered, and of the point of view from 
which its consideration will take place. In a word, 
we aim to introduce ourselves to a certain group of 
problems, on acquaintance with which our real 
success as teachers is most intimately dependent. 
And here I must ask your indulgence if much 
which I have to say in this first lecture seems 
somewhat remote from the experiences of our daily 
life of routine practise. To put to their best use 
the principles which underlie our high office,— its 
functions, its preparation, its ideals, — it is neither 
necessary, nor desirable, that we should keep these 
principles constantly before our minds; it is at 
least desirable and even necessary, however, that 
we should know what these principles are. We can 
then refer to them, when we doubt or debate, 
whether with ourselves or with one another, about 
their application to the concrete and definite, but 

3 



4 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

often very puzzling questions that arise in the 
midst of this daily experience. 

Much has been written of late about the science, 
or philosophy, of education. And you can scarcely 
have failed to notice that I have ventured to an- 
nounce my subject as dealing with a certain branch 
of such philosophy. I have, in fact, proposed to 
speak of "The Teacher's Practical Philosophy." 
Let us then, first of all, consider what can be meant 
by a so-called philosophy of education. For it is 
with education that the teacher has to do in a pro- 
fessional way. It is for this reason that the un- 
couth word "educationalist," has of late been em- 
ployed to designate those who for some reason— it 
may be good, it may be bad— have been supposed 
to be preeminent in matters of education. For 
myself, I much prefer the old-fashioned word 
teacher; I desire no higher honor than to be called 
by this title. 

To get some clear conception of the sonorous 
phrase, "philosophy of education," it is necessary 
to understand the use here made of each of the two 
words out of which the phrase itself is compounded. 
To give a most general, and therefore loose defini- 
tion: Education is the development of the active 
powers, or so-called faculties, X3f human nature, so as 
to fit them the better for the performance of their 
functions in all the varying relations sustained 
toward their physical environment ajid toward 



INTRODUCTORY 6 

society. In tlie sense in which I shall employ the 
word, only man, and not the lower animals, can be 
educated. Training is the more appropriate term 
for the lower animals. And we may stick by this 
important distinction, whatever views we feel in- 
clined to espouse with respect to the very difficult 
problem: How far do the most highly, so-called 
''educated" animals, such as certain dogs or man- 
like apes, really have, or develop, powers closely 
resembling the higher faculties of man ? 

From this most general conception it follows as a 
matter of course, in the first place, that in man's 
case all education is a species of conduct. But 
conduct is distinguished from mere action in sev- 
eral highly important ways. For one thing : conduct 
involves a more intelligent apprehension and mas- 
tery of the means available for attaining any de- 
sired end. It also involves a more intelligent and 
comprehensive conception of the end which is de- 
sired. But above all, it suggests a larger self- 
control, or self-chosen and self-directed use of 
select means toward reaching the desired end. It 
would take me much too far astray into some of 
the most obscure and difficult fields of the psychol- 
ogy implicated in the discussion, if I were to try to 
show you how some degree of the ability to form 
abstract conceptions of Time, Space, Self, and a 
certain emotional capacity for moral, artistic, and 
religious ideals, is evolved in the capacity of human 



6 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

nature for being educated,— in even this loosest 
and most general meaning of the word. But all 
this will become more evident, by the easier way of 
illustration, as the course of lectures moves forward 
over the field of the different topics it is intended 
to examine. 

Education is also, and of necessity, a develop- 
ment. Man, v/hether considered as an individual or 
as society,— collective man,— can not be educated 
all at once. And here we come upon a withering 
rebuke to all attempts at cramming, or rushing, 
or scamping, or over-hurrying the process. In 
education, you can not get around ''Old Father 
Time." If you try it, his sickle is so long and 
sharp, that he will either drive you back or cut 
you down. Education is, indeed, a development: 
It is, therefore, a process which takes time, and can 
be accomplished only by taking time. You can, 
indeed, shorten the time by cutting out the waste 
of time ; but you can not secure thoroughness and 
reality, and eliminate time. 

From the foregoing two conceptions, another fol- 
lows: Education always implies a complicated and 
variable system of actions and reactions. Even 
when we— not improperly— speak of the physical 
environment, or so-called Nature, as an important 
educative influence, we imply a sort of reciprocal 
activity between this physical environment and 
the conscious soul of man. If man were not a 



INTBODUGTOBT 7 

true * ' child of nature, ' ' and if nature were not in 
some respects akin to man, or self -like, in its rela- 
tions to man, then nature could not teach man; 
then man could not be educated by nature. And, 
of course, in all those forms of social influence 
which have an educative value, as all of them 
indeed do, there is no doubt that education is a 
species of conduct. 

But now, what follows from all this view of the 
essential nature of education, as shown by the most 
general conception attached to the word, is nothing 
less than the exceedingly important conclusion that 
education is essentially a moral affair, in the larger 
and grander meaning of the word ''moral." For 
conduct is the sphere of morals, — whether it be 
theory or practise. Conduct, and the development 
of character through the rational and wise direction 
of conduct, is the very essence of morality. 

If all this seems to you rather vague and indefin- 
ite, let us now address ourselves to the attempt at a 
more restricted and definite conception of educa- 
tion, as its process concerns the professional work 
of the teacher. In the sense in which we have thus 
far used the word, education, even in youth, is by 
no means confined to the school or to the teacher's 
work. The home-life, the particular occupation, — 
trade, business, profession, art,— more definitely, 
as well as the potent, but silent and often concealed, 
influences of the physical and social environment, 



8 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

are all of educative value. Indeed, through them, 
rather than through the school life, the multitudes 
must always, perhaps, receive most of their educa- 
tion. But we are to consider those influences which 
the teacher— and I may say, the professional teacher 
—should recognize and employ intelligently, in or- 
der to reinforce and enlarge those influences for 
good that come from this physical and social en- 
vironment. 

In his professional work, the teacher, as such, 
has certain very important advantages which dis- 
tinguish his position above all others, in its rela- 
tions to this difficult task. Let me mention some 
of the most familiar of these advantages. And, 
first, the work of education is obligatory in the 
teacher's case. This work is precisely that for 
which the teacher is appointed, and for which the 
pupil is sent to school. The teacher is, presumably, 
but not always wisely and effectively, * * backed up ' ' 
by, and is accountable to, the same authority which 
has placed upon him the responsibility of educa- 
tion. Now I know that we are accustomed to dream 
enticing dreams of how much happier we should be, 
and of how much more effective even, if only we 
were not obliged to do just about such a kind and 
quantity of teacher 's work. I suppose that the 
teacher who should earn— if such an one there could 
ever be — or who should inherit an independent 
fortune, and so would be less under the necessity of 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

incurring close-fitting responsibilities, would be 
looked upon as an object of envy. Professors, who 
have become emeritus and have been placed on a 
Carnegie foundation, are supposed to have attained 
the conditions for a perfectly happy life, here be- 
low, if not hereafter. They no longer have to teach; 
they are no longer under obligation to a presidential 
boss, or to a remote and not well-informed board 
of trustees or a corporation. But I assure you, my 
friends, that this in most cases is only because the 
person concerned does not love to teach, or is con- 
sciously unfit in body or mind to continue the work 
of teaching. A large measure of the firm and close- 
fitting sense of obligation— if only we could respect 
its source— conduces, in general, to the happiness 
as well as to the efficiency of the teacher. 

Other important advantages come to the profes- 
sional teacher in the work of education, from the 
fact that he has been especially trained for just this 
work. To be sure, there still lingers in many parts 
of this country, which is apt to boast so inordinately 
of the special attention which it gives to education, 
the practise of committing the work of education 
to persons who have had little or no professional 
training. But in the country at large, the demand 
for such training is rising ; and we may hope that 
the time is not eternally distant when an untrained 
person will be no more acceptable in the profession 



10 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPEY 

of teaching than in the profession of medicine, law, 
or even of the ministry. 

Again, the teacher has the important advantage 
of having his subjects committed to him at, and 
during, the formative period of their lives. The 
immaturity, the crudeness, and rank foolishness of 
one's pupils is often a severe trial to the teacher 
of serious purpose. It is also, not infrequently, a 
bitter disappointment that he can not hurry these 
youth through the raw and green age of develop- 
ment so fast as seems desirable. But it must not be 
forgotten that there is another side, and a side of 
hope to all this. Crudeness and foolishness are 
symptoms of the age in which the process of edu- 
cation is most appropriate, and its successful prog- 
ress most reasonable to expect. The age of im- 
maturity is the educable age. And just as the 
triumph of any artistic effort depends, not solely 
on the artist's ideal or the artist's skill, but also 
on the moldableness of the ma,terial, in which, by 
his skill, he must see his ideals more or less fully 
idealized, so it is preeminently with the art of the 
so-called ' ' educator. ' * 

Another advantage which is really great, but 
which belongs to our present system of education 
far less than it should, and to gain more of which 
it would, in my judgment, be well worth while to 
sacrifice a number of less important considerations, 
is this: The teacher's work is, for considerable por- 



INTRODUCTORY 11 

tions of one or more years at least, regular and 
unintermitting. He can thus reiterate, habitualize 
— **rub in,'* so to say — ^the truths and practises, of 
which he aims to make the pupil something of a 
master. In view of the immense loss of effective 
influence which comes from parting with this ad- 
vantage, I should favor some rearrangement of 
our public-school system, especially in the large 
schools of our cities, which should, so far as possi- 
ble, keep the same pupils under the same teachers 
for several years in succession. As it is now, too 
much of the work of education resembles the work 
of legislation; and this— to borrow a figure of 
speech from Milton — consists in large measure of 
*' hatching lies with the heat of legislation," and 
then killing off the brood hatched by the last 
legislature. 

And, finally, the teacher, if he is successful, may 
secure some of those most important domestic and 
social auxiliaries of the emotional kind, such as 
respect, confidence, and even tender affection. It 
was a saying of Confucius, which remains much 
more in force in the Orient than with us, and of 
which one of my Japanese pupils on our final part- 
ing reminded me, that '*the relations of reverence 
and love betwen the pupil and his teacher stand 
next to those of the son to his father.'* 

Such, then, is education as it is committed to the 
profession of the teacher ; and such are some of the 



12 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

advantages which the skilful and devoted teacher 
has at command, if he desires to employ them. This 
is enough to define, at least in a preliminary way, 
the subject-matter of this course of lectures. But 
now, a few words as to the method of the proposed 
treatment, and as to the point of view which it is 
proposed to assume in the effort to carry through 
successfully this method. Both the method and 
the point of view have been summarized in the 
phrase, "Practical Philosophy." 

What now is Philosophy? and what can be 
meant, that is profitable, by the proposal to treat 
of education from the philosophical point of view? 
In this country, in these days, the very word has 
become a term to excite the suspicion of approach- 
ing dull weather, with dark clouds overhanging 
and thick mist around; or else to awaken and 
strengthen concealed feelings of aversion and even 
scorn. We are so very *' practical" as a nation; and 
if we will listen at all to the philosophic voice, it 
must speak in terms of so-called *' Pragmatism, " 
of the very latest type. But, my friends, we fail to 
recognize that, for lack of a knowledge of princi- 
ples, we have, in business, politics, social better- 
ment, diplomacy, and education, fallen in not a few 
respects behind the more advanced nations of the 
civilized world. In answer to the question now 
before us, I am not proposing to entertain you with 
any occult doctrines, or hidden cult, or newly dis- 



INTRODUCTORY 13 

covered mysteries. The philosophy of education 
need not be understood as dealing with any thing 
of this sort. It is just an attempt at setting forth, 
in the most familiar manner, certain fundamental 
principles which underlie, and which should con- 
sciously and intelligently underlie, all the teacher 's 
profesional work and professional life. And since 
this work is more of an art than of a science, and 
the really successful teacher deserves to rank with 
a great artist rather than with a great scientfic 
discoverer, you will please consider what I say to 
you as matters of opinion on which you are your- 
selves to exercise your own reflective judgment, 
rather than as demonstrations of indubitable truths. 
In brief, then, the nature of a so-called philos- 
ophy of education may be the better understood, 
if we will reflect upon the meaning of the following 
statements. And, first, philosophy aims at the dis- 
covery of the most general principles appertaining 
to the subject about which it is proposed to philos- 
ophize. Science, too, aims at the discovery of gen- 
eral principles, and to these principles it is accus- 
tomed to give the name of laws. Science aims in 
this way to unify the phenomena. But as Mr. 
Spencer said, years ago, philosophy aims at a still 
higher kind of unity. In reaching out for this 
higher kind of unity, philosophy is apt to employ 
methods which I have elsewhere defined as the 
methods of reflective analysis and speculative syn- 



14 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

thesis. But not to make any mystery of this, let 
me only say that, when it is proposed to treat any 
subject in education philosophically, you are all 
invited to think that subject as nearly through as 
you possibly can— to think it out to the end; and 
then to put together in the form of a judgment 
for a guide in future practise, what you have thus 
thought through. " Through-ness, " or thorough- 
ness, is thus essential to the method of philosophy. 

But do not for a moment suppose that a philos- 
ophy of any one of the groups of problems which 
puzzle and worry the professional teacher can be 
based on airy nothings, on mere imaginings or 
vague sentiments— however worthy and noble in 
themselves these ima^nings and sentiments may 
seem. All sound and good philosophy must be based 
on experience— either of one's own or, what is bet- 
ter oftentimes, as embodied in some judgment that 
makes a valid claim to at least a sort of scientific 
quality. 

And here we are to remind ourselves that there 
are certain forms of study which, whether they can 
be called "sciences," or not, in the stricter mean- 
ing of that word, embody the kind of experience 
on which the philosophy of any particular group of 
problems in education must be based. I do not 
suffer myself to speak of a science of pedagogy. 
Indeed, the larger amount of what is current under 
this term seems to me distressingly shallow; and 



INTRODUCTORY 15 

no little of it I believe to be positively mischievous. 
But the study of psychology, in the broadest mean- 
ing of that term, as the science of human mental 
life, especially in the genetic way; the study of 
the history of education, as it sets forth the chang- 
ing and developing convictions and practises of the 
race touching the needs of the educational process 
and the best means of satisfying them ; the study of 
the lives and experiments, and of the results of the 
experiments, of the few men and women whose 
work has been epoch-making in education; the 
study, either by reading or at first hand of the 
social and educational conditions and needs of our 
own land and day — all these and other closely 
allied studies constitute the basis of experience 
on which we must try to place our philosophy of 
education, if we expect it to win and keep the 
confidence and respect of others, not to say our 
own confidence and respect. 

But I have announced my topic as **The Teach- 
er's Practical Philosophy.*' I might almost 
equally well have used the word *' ethical," or the 
word *' moral" to express my intention. For the 
sphere of the ethical or moral is the practical ; and 
in the broadest and best meaning of the words, the 
teacher's practical philosophy is the moral philos- 
ophy which deals with the principles of conduct 
that underlie the teacher's work. Education, as 
the professional teacher undertakes it, is a species 



16 THE TEACHER' 8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

of conduct; all conduct comes into, or rather 
essentially belongs within, the sphere of the moral ; 
or what is the same thing, of the practical. The 
study of education, as we are proposing to pursue 
it, should result in the discovery and systematic 
treatment of those most general principles of con- 
duct, which apply to the particular relations in 
which human beings are placed for purposes of 
education. More briefly and familiarly said: We 
inquire into the principles which should regulate 
the professional conduct of the teacher. To avoid, 
as far as possible under the circumstances, mis- 
understanding on the part of any of my hearers, 
let me repeat: It is principles rather than rules 
which we are to investigate; and these are to be, 
chiefly, the principles which are most fundamental 
and general, or nearly universal. It is not my 
purpose, then, to tell you just how to teach, after 
the somewhat too lordly manner of the master peda- 
gogue or so-called educator. And I am very glad 
that I am not committed to this purpose. I should 
very much rather learn the art of teaching, if 
that were possible, from some of you. As to those 
general principles, however, with which we all, 
as teachers, ought to be familiar, and upon which 
we ought constantly to endeavor to base our prac- 
tise, I feel much more confident of my ability to 
speak. They have been the topics of my thoughts 
and research, for more than two-score years. And 



INTRODUCTORY 17 

I shall not be surprised, if some of you finish this 
course of instruction with me by saying: *'Why! 
we knew all that before." In part, I am hoping 
to avoid this crushing piece of criticism, and to 
make the lectures of more use in the daily routine 
of the schoolroom, by illustrating and enforcing 
the principles, as we go along together, with much 
more material taken from concrete experiences, 
with which all may not be quite so familiar, or with 
which they may not have happened previously to 
have seen the principles connected. 

As to the Divisions of the subject: I am pro- 
posing, for purposes of convenience and clearness 
in our procedure, to discuss it under the following 
four heads. And, first, we shall raise this inquiry : 
How do the principles which constitute the prac- 
tical philosophy of education underlie, and apply 
to, the Functions of the teacher? I have already \ 
intimated that teaching seems to me to resemble in i 
many important respects a high-class form of art. 
But in all forms of human artistic activity, prin- 
ciples need to be, not so much learned as generaliza- 
tions that may prove useful in the discovery or 
explanation of concrete facts, as incorporated in 
habits of action and made ways of expressing the 
ideals and motives that control the spiritual life. 
In this part of the subject, therefore, we shall 
consider the workman at his work— what that work 
is, and how it ought to be done if it is to adapt 



18 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

itself to the underlying principles of a practical 
philosophy of education. In a word, we shall aim 
to sketch in outline the ethical doctrine of the 
forms of activity in which the art of teachir^ well 
consists. 

In the second division of the subject we shall 
consider the Equipment of the Teacher. Here we 
shall try to show how the same principles of the 
teacher's practical philosophy govern that self -cul- 
ture which fits one for the most rational and suc- 
cessful exercise of these same functions, or forms 
of activity. Like every other kind of workman, 
and even much more than most kinds of workmen, 
the professional teacher demands some special 
equipment for his special work. In attaining this 
equipment he must himself be active. The teacher's 
preparation is a species of conduct ; and it is, there- 
fore, a moral affair and falls under the control of 
the principles of a practical, and a practicable, 
philosophy. Although, however, this self-prepara- 
tion of the teacher is a kind of work which stands, 
often a long distance before, and always at the 
threshold, of his active life, it is also a preparation 
which can never be completely finished. The teach- 
er 's equipment gives him an everlasting gob. His 
work is never done. His getting ready for this 
work is never quite complete. Both functions and 
equipment, therefore, need the ceaseless control of 
moral principles. 



INTRODUCTORY 19 

But, in a way, presiding over both functions and 
equipment, and constituting the third division of 
our subject, are the Ideals of the Teacher. These 
are certain conceptions which have an emotional 
value, which have also a **puir' upon the will, 
and which set the aims of the workman at an alti- 
tude appreciably higher than the facts and actu- 
alities of present attainment. Ideals in education 
are preeminently matters to be dealt with in terms 
of the principles of a suitable moral philosophy. 
No heresy is more rank, indefensible, and mischie- 
vous, than that which would reduce all moral 
problems to questions of mere fact. Or, perhaps, 
it would be better to say that we can not even 
make the attempt to deal with moral problems in 
this way, and deal honestly and thoroughly, with- 
out coming upon this most important fact ; namely, 
that the notions of humanity as to what is not 
now, but which nevertheless ought to be, are them- 
selves facts, most plainly existent and of the most 
potent order. And without these facts, the very 
conceptions of the right and the wrong in conduct, 
in the moral meaning of the words '* right" and 
*' wrong," would have no intelligible meaning at 
all. The ideals of the teacher, therefore, like all 
other ideals, must be considered in the light of the 
principles of a true practical philosophy. 

Finally, in the fourth division of the subject, 
we shaU consider some of the more important of 



20 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the Relations which the Teacher sustains to the 
Welfare of Society and to the Stability and Pros- 
perity of the State. In this way I hope to reach 
something of a result which shall yield a broader 
outlook upon the teacher's field of operation; and 
which shall greatly enhance our estimate of the dig- 
nity, importance, and practical efficiency, when it 
is well done, of the teacher's work. 

In closing this first and introductory lecture, I 
wish to make a few remarks upon the value of the 
study of education from the philosophical point of 
view, as I have defined it; and, as well, of its 
results in their possible application to the daily 
routine work of the professional teacher. Such a 
study will not, indeed, furnish any rules of pro- 
cedure that are precise and ' ^ practical, ' ' in the nar- 
rower and much-abused, but widely current use of 
the latter word. It will tell no inquirer just what 
he must do in order to become a truly successful 
teacher. It does not even aim at so high, so utterly 
impossible a task. I have already said more than 
once, that teaching is more like an art than an 
exact science. No instruction in principles, and 
no amount of learning rules, will ever make an 
artist in any one of the several lines of art. My 
experience has taught me that here is a point at 
which the would-be teacher of teachers needs fre- 
quently to stop a bit, and expostulate and explain, 
even at the risk of seeriiing guilty of an unpar- 



INTRODUCTORY 21 

donable reiteration of commonplaces. For teach- 
ers, above all other classes of learners, and just 
because they are more honest and really desirous 
of learning than any other class of hearers, when 
attending lectures on so-called pedagogy, quite uni- 
formly get out their note-books and begin to listen 
and take notes, just as though they expected you 
to tell them some new secret appertaining to the 
truth, precisely how the thing we all find so diffi- 
cult, ought really to be done. But, my friends, I 
shall make no attempt at this; although I shall 
hope by the way to drop certain hints and sug- 
gestions which may stimulate and guide many a 
one of you in experimenting for himself, or her- 
self, to find out how in the individual case, the 
art of successful teaching may be, the better, put 
into actual practise. In making this sort of at- 
tempt, I may reasonably hope for a partial suc- 
cess. If I were to attempt the other task, I should 
most certainly, miserably fail. 

A survey of the principles of a practical philos- 
ophy for teachers may, however, yield one or more, 
or all, of the following valuable results. It may 
give a more comprehensive understanding and a 
firmer grasp of the principles themselves. I have 
already said that the principles of a teacher's prac- 
tical philosophy do not constitute a secret cult, nor 
does the knowledge of them reveal a mystery *' hid- 
den from the foundation of the world,'* until now. 



22 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

I am not posing as the prophet of a new revelation. 
But just because these principles are so universal, 
they are profound in a peculiar way ; and just be- 
cause they seem so commonplace they are peculiarly 
liable to become covered up with less important 
material and either overlooked or quite neglected. 
Just as in politics and business and religion, it is 
the more general principles of conduct, touching 
honor, fidelity, justice, truthfulness, unselfishness, 
which are most apt to be little regarded, imper- 
fectly recognized, and faultily applied, so it is 
with the moral principles which should control the 
functions, the equipment, and the ideals, of the 
professional teacher. And when some one, like the 
late President Cleveland, or other advocate of im- 
proved politics— or, better still, the world's great 
teachers and reformers of morals and religion — 
announces and reiterates these principles, they are 
received with a sort of shock of surprise as tho they 
were the newly acquired results of some great dis- 
covery. But they are, in fact, principles which 
should always be kept in, if not before, the mind, 
and which admit of unlimited study, because they 
are designed for universal application. Such study 
is of the very highest practical value. 

The same study should also give to all who undei*- 
take it in seriousness, a higher ideal of the stand- 
ard of personal worth and personal culture, which 
is required of the teacher in order to the best equip- 



INTRODUCTORY 23 

ment and adaptation to his work of education. If 
the ideal is not set so high as to be a perpetual 
source of discouragement, and if its conception is 
tempered and supplemented by a large amount of 
good sense and a growing experience with the in- 
evitable conditions which limit, while they support, 
all forms of human endeavor, then the clarified and 
high ideal attained in this way, is a most valuable 
asset for the practising teacher. 

Under the stimulus of such an ideal, and by the 
guidance of a growing comprehension of the afore- 
said principles, it is scarcely avoidable that there 
should be an awakening of the mind, a fixing of the 
will, a discipline and an habitual exercise of the 
powers of body and soul, which will result in a 
progressive and approximate realization of the 
teacher's ideals. Or, if this does not seem to be so 
to the individual Self, it will be because the ideals 
have themselves risen faster than the most ardent 
and aspiring pace in the endeavor to overtake them. 
Other less exacting and fairer judges than the per- 
son himself, are quite sure, in the long run, to note 
something of this realization. 

And last of all— an effect which must always 
seem more distant and more dim, on account of the 
ceaseless change and widening of the horizon, and 
the multiplicity and powerful influence of new and 
unexpected obstacles which are liable to be inter- 
posed — there will be some increase of deeply-seated 



24 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

hope and quiet confidence in those larger and more 
distantly future, political and social results which 
can be secured only for a well-educated community 
of human beings. For if we add, as we must, 
morals and religion to the educative forces which 
determine the destiny of the nation and the real and 
lasting progress of social institutions, we can not 
escape the conclusion, that on the quality of the 
common education, these great interests chiefly 
depend. And to the teachers in the public schools, 
more than to any other class, these interests are 
committed at the present time. 



Part I 
THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 



25 



LECTURE II 

THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER: 

AS A SPECIES OF INTERCOURSE BETWEEN 

PERSONS 

In the last lecture I promised to consider, as tlie 
first topic requiring treatment in a practical philos- 
ophy of education, the functions, or forms of the 
activity, of the professional teacher. In defining 
the point of view adopted and maintained by such 
an attempt at >a philosophy, I also made it clear 
that all the processes of education, and especially 
the part which the teacher of the young has in it, 
are a species of conduct. And, indeed, it is human 
conduct which constitutes the peculiar sphere of all 
so-called ''practical philosophy.'* To say this, 
however, is almost the same thing as saying that all 
teaching is a personal affair, is a species of inter- 
course between persons. The moral principles 
which regulate the intercourse of persons must, 
therefore, be identical with those which establish 
rules for the practical activities or functions, of 
the professional teacher. 

Let me then, first of all, explain and expand this 
thought that the work of the teacher is essentially a 
personal affair. 

27 



28 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

The various actions and re-actions which go to 
make up our world of movement and change, as 
respects the nature of the beings between which 
they take place, may be roughly divided into three 
classes. Some actions and re-actions, some changes, 
are always taking place between things ; or between 
animals and men on the one hand, and things on 
the other hand. If what takes place is merely a 
question of the changed relations of things, of what 
things are doing to each other, or suffering from 
each other, and no personal interests are involved, 
we do not look upon the transaction as a matter of 
moral concernment. I say, we do not look upon 
such happenings as moral affairs. The same thing 
is not quite true of savage, or so-called primitive 
men. And the reason why it is not true is sugges- 
tive as illustrating our present contention. For the 
reason is that these men regard things, and espe- 
cially things that seem to be alive, as somehow en- 
dowed with a kind of personal life; or, at least, 
as the cherished seats of personal beings. As in- 
fluenced by this way of looking at things, much 
of human artistic and religious development has 
taken place. Of course, the same influence has 
always been the source of the widely prevalent and 
highly variegated forms of nature- worship. 

When we come to consider the rules which regu- 
late the intercourse between things on the one hand, 
and animals and men on the other, the clearer con- 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 29 

ception of a certain moral source for these rules 
begins to appear. At the same time, we think, and 
men have always thought, that it is right for the 
latter to use the former, as tho mere things have 
no rights which men and animals are bound to re- 
spect. To be sure, both savage and cultured men 
may, and should, so respect the beauty and the 
divinity which are embodied even in things, as not 
to abuse them. This, too, is because we partially 
personify things, and thus invest them with per- 
sonal qualities which we feel ''bound to respect." 
Our intercourse with them, however, is not, strictly 
considered, a personal affair; and we should not 
think of trying to teach them to go right. We only 
speak seriously of training things. 

We come much nearer to the point of view of our 
proposed practical philosophy, when we consider 
the rules which it is thought ought to regulate the 
actions and reactions and the changes which go on 
in the relations among the animals; and between 
all the animals and man. We often look with a sort 
of pain and disgust on the ruthless and cruel way 
in which different species of animals, and different 
members of the same species, treat one another ; and 
we wonder how a perfectly good God could have 
made a world which seems to have its very founda- 
tions laid in so much of suffering and loss to animal 
life. But we are somewhat relieved when the biolo- 
gists point out that, only in some such way as this, 



so TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHIL080PB7 

SO far as human science is able to divine, could 
we have any world of swarming and varied life; 
and we are further comforted when it is shown that 
all these species are probably useful and valuable, 
but only in their day and generation, and if they 
prevent one another from usurping the whole earth. 
If in our mistaken zeal we join the local anti-vivi- 
section society, and attend one of its meetings, hav- 
ing eaten a hearty meal of pork or beef -steak, and 
wearing a coat with a fur collar or a bonnet with 
one or two slaughtered birds to crown its beauty, 
we may reasonably be influenced, and I hope we 
should be influenced in our vote upon the resolu- 
tions proposed, by the undoubted truth that, but for 
a large and, probably, an increasing amount of the 
use in this way, of our brethren, the lower animals, 
we could never conquer, or even much ameliorate, 
most of the diseases which sorely afflict the human 
race. But, leaving this on one side, I wish to 
make it perfectly plain that when we talk about the 
*' rights" of animals, or about our ** duties'' to the 
animals, we personify them. It is only by personi- 
fying them that we can consider our intercourse 
with them as a personal affair. As I have already 
said: We can not properly speak of teaching, 
rather than training, the animals, in the full sense 
in which the former word applies to human beings. 
Now, on the contrary, as to intercourse between 
human beings, there is no principle of a moral phi- 



TEE FUNCTION OP THE TEACHER 31 

losophy more fundamental and universal than this ; 
Persons can never properly be treated as mere 
things, or as nothing more than sensitive, living 
animals. All forms of intercourse between men are 
to be characterized as coming under a different 
and higher set of considerations than those which 
regulate the intercourse of men with things or with 
the lower animals. 

Now, teaching is obviously and expressly a per- 
sonal affair. It can never for an instant, then, 
slip out from under the jurisdiction of those prin- 
ciples which control the rights and duties of per- 
sons. The teacher's functions, when considered in 
this way, all become defined in terms of a particular 
kind of personal intercourse. The preparation for 
the teacher's office, essentially considered, becomes 
a development of a personality adapted for the suc- 
cessful discharge of those functions. The teacher's 
ideals become ideals of personal character. The 
more extensive social and political results which are 
achieved through the discharge of these functions 
concern the improvement of the collective action 
and intercourse of personal beings, as united in 
various social ways and in the state. 

Perhaps, then, the most important and illumi- 
nating exhortation of which we can frequently 
avail ourselves as teachers, might be stated in some 
such general way as the following: "Always re- 
member that you are a person, and that you are 



32 TEE TEAOHEB'8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

dealing with persons.*' This implies that yon have 
both rights and duties and that your pupils have, 
each one, both rights and duties. 

This rather vague, general statement of the 
nature of the teacher's function as a kind of per- 
sonal intercourse, may now be made more definite 
and close-fitting to our peculiar sort of work, by 
bringing before our minds certain particular con- 
siderations. And, first, there is this thought to be 
borne in mind: In its most definite and culminat- 
ing form, teaching involves a special relation, for 
the time being, between two personal beings. There 
is the teacher, one person; and there is the pupil, 
another person ; and, for the moment, they two are 
the only persons to be considered. With our mod- 
ern fashions, which are in large measure born of 
necessity, and the necessity of which seems to be an 
inseparable accompaniment of public education, 
there is much lecturing and class-teaching, which 
can not possibly realize this ideal. The stimulus of 
the others in the class, and to a less degree of the 
rest of the audience in the lecture-room, are not 
without their advantages. But, after all, the ideal 
form of the teacher's activity is the personal inter- 
course of one mind with one other mind. This 
individual work is the supreme exercise of the 
teacher's function. In that supreme exercise, there 
is only one teacher and one pupil. And I am sure 
that every true-hearted teacher desires, and every 



TEE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 33 

specially successful teacher somehow secures, as 
much as is possible under the hard circumstances 
of modern public education, of this individual 
** hand-picking'* kind of work. 

The truly hopeful thing about the particularity 
of the teacher's personal intercourse with his pupils 
is the fact that, in the order of possible efficiency 
and resultfulness, the relation of teacher and pupil 
is excelled by only one other— namely, the relation 
of parent and child. Indeed, when the home-life is 
so disturbed and, I fear, degenerate, as much of the 
home-life in this country has come to be, the teacher 
has certain distinct advantages over the average 
parent, in respect of his personal relations to the 
development of the youthful life. In the case of 
the adult pupil in the most advanced forms of edu- 
cation, whether in the Graduate Department of the 
University or in the Professional School, there is 
a voluntary assumption of this relation which gives 
opportunity for the most effective and valuable 
species of intercourse between persons. But I 
have already sufficiently remarked upon this kind 
of advantages which the process of education puts 
into the teacher's hand. 

It will be, in large part, the purpose of this 
entire course of lectures to apply the principles 
which should regulate all intercourse between per- 
sons to the special case of the professional teacher. 
But the very conception of education as involving 



34 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

a special kind of personal intercourse gives the 
opportunity to call attention to the following prac- 
tical truths. And first, the work of the teacher 
flourishes best under the influence of a high esti- 
mate of the value of personal qualities and of the 
personal life. Such an estimate can not, of course, 
be expected of the very young pupil ; but it may be 
slowly and insensibly cultivated in the minds of 
even the youngest pupils. It should be held by the 
teacher, however, as the indispensable condition 
and the constant accompaniment of all his profes- 
sional work. Books, buildings, methods, results 
that can be tested by examinations or exhibitions of 
attainments and skill of various kinds — all these 
matters are accessory, and being only accessory, are 
of inferior value. It is the kind of persons who 
are being engaged in, and produced and nurtured 
by, this species of personal intercourse, that fur- 
nishes the material for the soundest and final esti- 
mate of the results of education. To manufacture 
high-class persons, for all the varied callings and 
conditions of the national life, is the task of the 
teacher. 

With this goes, as a matter of course, the culti- 
vation of a due respect for personal rights. Both 
teacher and pupils, being persons, have such sacred 
and inalienable rights. It is, therefore, the duty of 
the teacher to have a sane and well-founded con- 
ception of his own rights, and a fair and even 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 35 

generous conception of the rights of the pupils as 
against himself and against one another. There is 
no impression more helpful to the highest success 
of the teacher than the belief on the part of the 
pupils that the man or the woman who is put over 
them, to preserve order and to enforce discipline, 
is perfectly fair. Probably, nothing more embar- 
rasses and thwarts the otherwise most approved 
methods in the imparting of instruction and the 
administering of a school, than the suspicion of 
favoritism. I shall never forget the effect, in my 
own case, of being compelled to relinquish my right 
of going to the head in a ''spelling-down match,'* 
because the little girl, who had been standing at 
the head, but had missed the word, cried so piti- 
fully on being requested to take her place at the 
foot of the class. I was at the time a child of 
only seven years. The incident, as looked back 
upon from the point of view of adult life, became 
amusing. But for years after its occurrence, it 
rankled in memory as an act of gross injustice ; and 
I have never been able to consider it as merely a 
question appealing to a boy's sense of chivalry. 

But it is especially necessary that the pupils 
should be influenced by the example of the teacher, 
and if necessary, compelled by his authority, to 
treat with respect one another's rights. All "bully- 
ing," "fagging," "hazing," and other invasions 
of the rights of the younger and weaker by the 



36 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

older and stronger, should, so far eis possible, be 
judiciously but sternly repressed. I take this 
opportunity to express myself most unqualifiedly 
and emphatically against all this class of the vio- 
lations of human rights, by whatever euphonious 
title such violations may be named, or however 
authorized and consecrated by ancient customs, or 
in whatever institution— university, college, com- 
mon school, or Government school— they may be 
perpetrated. Especially obnoxious and objection- 
able from every point of view is everything of 
the sort in the schools for the training of youths for 
the army and the navy. The claim that such pro- 
cedure helps to make men brave and enduring is 
absurd, whether we test it from the point of view 
of ethical theory or that of the experiences of his- 
tory. On the contrary, everything of the sort tends 
to make men either brutal or truckling and cow- 
ardly. It is to the credit of the Japanese system 
of education that, so far as a searching and nearly 
omniscient authority in such matters can go, no 
bullying, fagging, hazing, or anything of the kind, 
is allowed in the schools of Japan. And in the 
army and navy, any departure from courteous and 
brotherly conduct, on the part of the officer toward 
the private, is as strictly forbidden by the Imperial 
rescript, and is as likely to be promptly and 
severely punished, as are disobedience and insolence 
on the part of the private toward his superior. 



TEE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 37 

Absolutely nothing of the brutalities so common in 
the Russian and German armies is known in the 
Japanese army. But one acquainted with the facts 
of the Russo-Japanese war would scarcely venture 
to accuse the Japanese soldiers of either cowardice 
or inferior regard for discipline. Brave, self- 
respecting, and ' ' other-regarding ' ' men and women 
can never be reared in this country, unless, as boys 
and girls, these same persons are educated in a high 
estimate and constant, practical regard for the 
values of personal lives and for the rights inalien- 
able from personal beings. 

But something even more positive than all that 
has thus far been said, follows from our conception 
of the functions of the teacher as an affair, through- 
out, of personal intercourse. Successful teaching 
requires an intelligent devotion in personal service. 
Properly speaking, no person can dutifully serve 
things. All real and rightful duty is summed up in 
the service of persons. We speak, indeed, of "serv- 
ing tables. ' ' But to serve mere tables is an ignoble 
thing and unworthy of any person— no matter how 
ignorant and lowly. But, for that matter, so it is to 
serve a railroad, or a bank, or a university, or even 
a Flag. I know that we indulge ourselves in many 
attractive and effective fictions connected with our 
ideas of dutiful and faithful service. Some of these 
fictions are very powerful for evil and some of them 
are perhaps equally powerful for good. But it is 



38 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

scarcely rational to be carried away with enthu- 
siasm by mere names. He who has served the 
Standard Oil, or the Equitable Life Insurance, or 
Yale University, or Saint John's Church, or Saint 
Patrick's Cathedral, for an entire lifetime, is not 
for that reason alone, necessarily entitled to be 
addressed in the Day of Judgment: ''Well done, 
good and faithful servant. ' ' But he who faithfully 
and honestly, and efficiently, serves the person who 
sets the tables or the persons who eat at the tables, 
and he who serves in the same way the persons rep- 
resented by the names of any of these institutions, is 
entitled to this kind of commendation. It is a far 
more honorable and valuable service to have con- 
tributed to the making of one or two intelligent 
and good persons, by teaching in some obscure 
country school, than simply to have been cele- 
brated as a brilliant lecturer at Harvard or Chi- 
cago for one or two score of years. To be '*of 
help" to his pupils, and to train them, by example 
and injunction, to help one another, is the duty 
and the privilege of the teacher's personal function. 
Our thought of the functions of the teacher as a 
species of personal intercourse, and therefore, as 
all coming under the principles of a practical phi- 
losophy, encourages a lofty aspiration after the 
realization of personal ideals. As seen from the 
point of view set by these principles, the noblest 
thing in the world is a noble person. The most 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 39 

beautiful thing in the world is a beautiful person- 
ality. The old-fashioned way of stating this truth, 
but a way the essential truth of which can never 
become obsolete, and which never ought to be 
allowed to become obscured by other forms of esti- 
mating values, was to declare: "Man is the noblest 
work' of God.'^ Translated into another form of 
language, which need not conflict with the old- 
fashioned way, but which may be held to be another 
phrase for expressing the same thought, the physi- 
cal and social forces that are shaping humanity, all 
seem aspiring toward the goal of producing the 
perfect man. It is in personal being that the work 
of Nature reaches its supreme realization. But 
education, in the more limited meaning of the 
word, aims at this ideal in a somewhat deliberate 
and self-conscious way. And since the work of the 
teacher makes him concerned, in a special manner, 
in this process, it involves both the striving after a 
personal ideal for himself, and also after the pro- 
gressive realization of the same ideal, through his 
influence, in others. 

Certain more definite rules, which bear upon the 
work and the preparation of the teacher, would 
seem to follow from the conception of the process 
of education as a species of personal intercourse. 
One of these concerns directly the duties of the 
appointing power. The possession of at least a 
satisfactory mimimum of personal character is an 



40 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

indispensable qualification for the teacher. This 
mimimum qualification should be enforced by the 
authority that appoints the teacher. One of the 
stock questions on the sheets of the agencies who 
undertake to secure desirable, if not lucrative, posi- 
tions for all intending teachers reads as follows: 
"Is he (or she) a person of good moral charac- 
ter?" It has always been a question with me, when 
answering the hundreds of such circulars received 
during the last forty years, how far the question 
itself is at all seriously put ; and how far the answer 
is generally given with due thoughtfulness, or, when 
received, esteemed of any considerable significance. 
Surely it does mean something more than whether 
the applicant has ever been in jail as convicted of 
some heinous crime or misdemeanor. Yet, there 
have been some shocking cases, where even (?) 
college presidents have recommended to others, men 
of whom they themselves wished to be rid, but who 
were of either doubtful or vicious moral character. 
And by common repute, in the school districts of 
the country places, it is often the relative of the 
appointing power, or some candidate who has some 
sort of a pull, rather than the one best fitted in 
character and attainments for the position, who 
secures the appointment. On the other hand, 
however, if the standard of personal worth is raised 
too high, the supply of teachers might easily become 
deficient — a principle which applies to the other 



TEE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 41 

professions quite as much as to the profession 
of teaching. And as the moderator of a meeting 
held by a colored church in the South for the elec- 
tion of deacons, said in the hearing of a friend of 
mine, when the objection was raised to the candi- 
dates that they could not read the Bible: **What 
are you objecting for? We got to have some dea- 
cons anyhow." 

While, then, this rule, like almost all other rules 
applying to the selection of individuals to whom 
important trusts are to be committed, can be en- 
forced only with a relative and by no means abso- 
lute success; there can be little doubt about its 
negative side, so to say. No person of unworthy or 
bad character should be placed in the position of a 
teacher of the young. This species of personal 
intercourse demands, as few other kinds of per- 
sonal intercourse do demand, not only mental 
equipment but moral fitness. 

It follows from this, as the other side of the 
same truth, that the qualification of personal worth 
should be carefully cultivated by anyone purposing 
to exercise the functions of a teacher. I fail to see 
why it is any less our duty as teachers, to plan and 
strive for a character that is sound and noble and 
worthy of imitation by our pupils, that to observe 
and listen and read, with a view to acquiring knowl- 
edge and skill in imparting knowledge to others. 

As teachers, therefore, we are bound to remember 



42 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

that the most successful exercise of our entire 
function depends, in a pivotal way, upon our 
possession of a worthy personal character. Such a 
character will not, indeed, guarantee or bring with 
it all the other needed forms of the teacher 's equip- 
ment. One does not necessarily become acquainted 
with the rules of the simplest mathematics— much 
less with the laws of modern physics or chemistry, 
or with the facts and lessons of history, or with any 
foreign language or its literature— by merely try- 
ing to be good. On the other hand, the possession 
of any amount of knowledge, including an acquaint- 
ance with the latest discoveries in so-called peda- 
gogy, without a cultivated character, will not qual- 
ify one to attain the highest success as a teacher. 
On this matter the Chinese have a saying, which 
when modified and expressed in rather blunt Eng- 
lish, may be made to read as follows : * ' Education 
without morals makes men knaves; morals with- 
out education leave men fools. ' ' 

But the truth about the whole matter lies far 
deeper than this. For men that are knaves are 
fools as well; and no man can voluntarily remain 
a fool without becoming also somewhat of a knave. 
"When we tell the small boy or girl, *'now be good 
and get your lessons,'' we repose the rationality 
of our exhortation upon the firmest of ethical foun- 
dations. For the moment, getting the lesson is 
being good; and doing anything else than getting 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 43 

the lesson is being bad. Let us look at the subject 
for an instant in a manner worthy of thoughtful 
and mature minds. The acquisition of scholarship 
and science is by nature such as to call forth and 
to cultivate some of the most fundamental and 
indispensable of the virtues. Of these, the virtues 
of industry, courage, self-denial, love of the truth, 
and respect for it, wisdom, insight, etc., are among 
the most conspicuous. This is, however, a matter 
to which I shall direct your attention more in detail, 
in two of the subsequent lectures of this course. 

The last of the practical maxims which I shall 
attempt, at present, to derive from the point of 
view which regards the function of the teacher as 
a species of personal intercourse, and so essentially 
a moral affair, has respect to the final aim of the 
teacher. This final aim should be the upbuilding 
of personal character in his pupils. Here, how- 
ever, we must remember two things: First, that 
character is no simple affair, but, on the contrary, 
an exceedingly complex product; and second, that 
the complex elements of a good and noble character 
can never be acquired in independence, one of 
another, and, indeed, each one of every other. 
This, too, is a subject to which reference will fre- 
quently be made in other connections. 

In closing the lecture of to-day, I wish to state in 
the briefest possible form the three points of view, 
which have already been taken, and from which I 



44 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

am proposing to consider all the particular topics 
that are to come before us in the entire course of 
lectures. 

First: A Teacher's Practical Philosophy aims to 
discover and apply the moral principles which 
should control the work, the equipment, and the 
ideals— in a word, the whole professional life of 
the teacher. 

Second: Since morals have to do with the con- 
duct of persons, and with personal relations, a 
practical philosophy for teachers must consider 
teaching as a form of personal intercourse ; and the 
rules governing it will, therefore, be such as prop- 
erly apply to this special kind of personal inter- 
course. 

But, thirdly : This special character of the Teach- 
er's Practical Philosophy will, necessarily, be modi- 
fied by changes in the educational conditions, as 
dependent upon different stages in the world's edu- 
cational development, different systems of educa- 
tion, different grades and institutions in the same 
system, and even different individual character- 
istics, as exemplified in both teachers and pupils. 
While, then, we can not go into all these details, 
and do not even aspire to point out to every indi- 
vidual teacher, just how he (or she) ought to do 
in order to make the art flourish, we shall try to 
produce from these seed-thoughts a good crop of 
maxims and suggestions for the improved conduct 



TEE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 45 

of the schoolroom under the existing conditions of 
the system of education in this country. But I beg 
you always to remember that this system is con- 
fessedly very imperfect, is at present undergoing 
much well deserved criticism, and is being sub- 
jected to not a few changes, some of which are 
probably for the worse, as some of them are cer- 
tainly for the better. 



LECTURE III 

THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER: 
AS STIMULATING INTEREST 

In all ordinary cases, the pupil is dependent 
largely upon the teacher, for the awakening of 
interest, not only in the subjects of the daily study, 
but in the whole process of education. The average 
human being is, as respects every kind of work, a 
lazy animal. The child, if healthy, enjoys activity, 
indeed ; but it is such activity as is primarily pleas- 
urable, whether it tends to desirable ends in the 
education of ^e individual and the race, or not. 
It is, of course, a matter with which the tact of 
the teacher is required to deal, to make pleasurable 
the activities which must be enlisted in the inter- 
ests of the educational process. But this can never 
be done, at the starting points of the process, in 
any complete and thoroughly profitable way. Play 
may to a certain extent be made educative ; but all 
the discipline of education can never be converted 
into play. Much of the process of education can 
be made to furnish the pleasure which comes from 
all normal, healthy, and properly controlled use of 
our *' active powers,'' only by turning the love of 
play, merely as play, into the love of work as the 

46 



TEE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 47 

noblest, and most satisfying kind of play. But just 
this constitutes one of tlie difficult tasks of the pro- 
fessional teacher. 

The very nature of the personal intercourse in 
which the relations of teacher and pupil consist 
puts the former into the position of a ' ' starter ' * of 
interest. The interest which it is desirable to have 
is not, as yet, there ; it awaits the process of awak- 
ening. The teacher is in a preferred position to 
awaken it. 

But the teacher also stands to the pupil in the 
relation of a guide and director of interest. It is 
comparatively easy to stir up a certain kind of 
interest, over, or around, or about, almost any kind 
of subject. It is another, and oftentimes a much 
more difficult matter, to aim that interest at a re- 
quired piece of work; and it is still more difficult 
to keep the interest persistently directed toward its 
aim, when it appears clear that reaching what is 
aimed at implies a good deal of hard work. Obser- 
vation of this fact is a bare commonplace in every 
line of human endeavor; it is a commonplace, the 
application of which to experience is by no means 
confined to the age of childhood, or to the laziest 
of the adult men and women of any community. 

Now, the teachers of the nation are in such a 
relation to the youth of the nation, and to the en- 
tire population of the nation, as to be the starters, 
guides, and protectors, of the interests of educa- 



48 THE TEAOSER'8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

tion. Even in the case of nations where the Gov- 
ernmental control of the educational system, and 
of the institutions of education, is much more strict 
than it is in the United States, the public interest 
in education can not awaken or maintain itself at 
any high level without the active cooperation of 
the persons who do the teaching of the nation. And 
the first and the perennial sources of any wide- 
spread and intelligent interest, are to be found in 
the work of the classroom. For if the children and 
youth of the nation do not become interested in 
education, the multitudes of the nation will not 
long remain interested in education. Institutions 
are sure to languish, when the minds who plan and 
execute the plans that form the institutions are 
allowed to lose interest. 

The function of the teacher, which consists in 
stimulating interest in the pupils, can be best 
treated by basing our treatment on the psycho- 
logical doctrine of attention. For, so far as inter- 
est is under control, whether by the self or by 
others, the doctrine of interest is identical with the 
doctrine of attention. Nothing is more common 
with us teachers than to exhort or command our 
pupils to give attention ; or in case we have found 
open exhortation and express command rather in- 
effective, to resort to some roundabout and even 
trickish methods in order to secure what we desire. 
Indeed, of late, the relation of interest to attention, 



THE FUNCTION OF TEE TEACHER 49 

and the absolute necessity of attention in the edu- 
cative process, have become so much expounded in 
pedagogical literature, and so insisted upon, as to 
put an almost intolerable burden upon the consci- 
entious teacher. He is made to feel as though he 
were a sort of Adam, or ^'first-father" of the entire 
race of his pupils, and so in a wholly mysterious 
and unavoidable way responsible for the sins and 
moral and mental deficiencies of all his numerous 
descendants. It becomes eminently necessary, then, 
for the teacher who would escape as much as pos- 
sible of this load of guilt, to inquire diligently into 
the rules for the shaping of his conduct according 
to a valid knowledge of the nature and develop- 
ment of the power of giving and eliciting attention. 
The first thing to notice in studying this subject 
is the fact that there can never be in a living and 
conscious human being, a complete lack of some 
kind and degree of attention. Attention is the 
indispensable condition and constant accompani- 
ment of all mental activity. All kinds of conscious 
states are necessarily characterized by more or less 
of attention— either such as we call * 'forced" or 
such as we have a right to consider ''voluntary" 
and "selective." "We should not be far wrong, 
if we said that consciousness is, essentially, either a 
wandering and relatively rapid and uncontrolled 
redistribution of psychic energy in the form of 
attention; or else, a relatively concentrated, fixed, 



50 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

and voluntary distribution of energy— also in the 
form of attention. 

But, again, attention is the prerequisite and the 
accompaniment of all mental development. No 
other one test of the stage reached in the process 
of education is at once more severe and more deci- 
sive than that of a cultivated and self-controlled 
attention. Notice the child who is born an idiot, 
or who is suffering as a case of arrested develop- 
ment. There is the rolling head and the wandering 
eye, making impossible the fixation of attention, in 
the act of vision. There is evidence of the same 
inability to listen— an activity which is something 
more than mere hearing, and implies the power to 
render a measure of voluntary attention. The very 
beginnings of the attempt to educate this idiotic or 
backward child must be laid in the effort to elicit 
interest and fix attention. The truth, however, does 
not apply to these unfortunate human beings alone, 
or even in any essentially different way. All men- 
tal development takes place as conditioned upon 
the growth of the qualities of trained and available 
powers of attention. 

The chief qualities to which reference has just 
been made, and the growth in which furnishes the 
indispensable conditions of all mental development 
are these: (1) Intensity, or concentration of atten- 
tion; (2) circuit covered, or comprehensiveness of 
attention; (3) rapidity, or speed of the movement 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 51 

of attention; (4) the selective or voluntary char- 
acter of attention. Briefly to describe these changes 
in the quality of the ability to give attention, which 
the function of the teacher binds him to try to 
secure, we may say : ' ' The educated mind can con- 
centrate its energy on some particular object or 
group of objects, as the uneducated mind can not ; 
it can give more of attention. It can also attend to 
more objects at the same time ; it can cover in a 
practically simultaneous manner a much wider field 
of attention. The trained mind can also move 
more rapidly than the untrained mind in the distri- 
bution and redistribution of the energy of atten- 
tion ; it can get over more ground in the same unit 
of time. ' ' Children of slow-moving power of atten- 
tion are necessarily backward in their studies. 
''Slow but sure" is a motto which expresses a cer- 
tain truth ; but ' ' quick and sure ' ' is better. Above 
all else, however, the art of the teacher is called for 
in the effort to put the pupil in control of his own 
attention. The self-control of attention is the most 
important thing in education. The very core of 
education, so to say, is the cultivation of the power 
of self-control in that concentration, readjustment 
and direction of mental energy which we call * ' vol- 
untary attention." 

And now, from the very nature of attention and 
from the laws which control its development, it fol- 
lows that the culture of attention, and the awaken- 



52 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

ing and direction of interest as related to this 
culture, are of the utmost importance in the attain- 
ments of science and in the building of character. 
Without giving an interested and cultivated atten- 
tion to things, we can not know them — ^what they 
are or how to use them. Especially does the growth 
of all science and the construction of scientific 
system require the service of minds trained in the 
self-control of an interested attention. 

But more important even than this is the fact 
that the growth of voluntary and selective attention 
determines the formation and development of per- 
sonal character. A person who does not take heed 
to his ways can not possibly become a good person. 
Not to take heed to one 's ways is the essence of the 
immorality of frivolity. And "frivolity," says 
Humboldt, *' undermines all morality and permits 
no deep thought or pure feeling to germinate; in a 
frivolous soul nothing can emanate from princi- 
ple, and sacrifice and self-conquest are out of the 
question." Indeed, it might be claimed that the 
very birth of a true personality, the rising above 
the plane of the animal, the construction of a Self, 
in the highest acceptation of that term, depends 
upon the growth of voluntary and selective atten- 
tion. And certainly the ascending stages in self- 
hood, through which the individual, and the race 
are compelled to pass, are all dependently related 
to the growth and education of a self-controlled 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 53 

and properly directed attention and interest. Ac- 
cording to a man's interests, so is he; according to 
what a man attends to, so is his life, mental, spir- 
itual, and practical. 

And now let us consider some of the more spe- 
cific problems, as they present themselves to the 
teacher in the pursuit of his daily routine, which 
are connected with the theory of interest and its 
influence over the development of the power of 
attention. And, first, I will speak briefly of the 
more obvious and important physiological condi- 
tions of interest and attention. Prolonged excite- 
ment of interest and concentration of attention 
seems to make a corresponding demand upon the 
stores of energy which belong to the centers of the 
brain— especially those most closely correlated with 
the particular forms of mental activity emphasized 
by the special interest excited and the special kind 
of attention demanded. Here it should be explained 
that the conception of the older form of phre- 
nology, which aimed to locate the so-called faculty 
of attention in some particular part of the brain 
as its organ, has no standing in modem physi- 
ology. There is no one organ of attention. We 
have, however, indisputable evidence that certain 
of the cerebral areas are related in a special way 
to particular ones of the more elementary forms of 
mental functioning. With this rather vague, gen- 
eral meaning we may speak, for example, of visual 



54 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

areas, auditory areas, motor areas— and even, within 
the wider motor area, of areas for the arm, the 
leg, the fore-arm, and the fingers. It follows, then, 
that there are many centers of the brain, on the 
integrity and well-nourished condition of which, 
the power to give attention is indirectly dependent. 
To give attention with the eye makes a special de- 
mand upon the so-called visual centers; to give 
attention with the ear, upon the so-called auditory 
centers; to kick football, upon the leg centers; to 
use a pen, upon the hand centers, etc., etc. 

I need scarcely do more than call your attention 
to some of the conditions which it is the duty of the 
teacher, so far as is possible, to secure for himself 
and his pupils, in order to make it easy and safe 
to excite interest, and to give a concentrated, intel- 
ligent, and prolonged attention. Among these con- 
ditions are an abundance of oxygen so that the 
brain may be supplied with properly aerated 
blood ; a sufficient supply of nourishing food, altho 
here it must be borne in mind that a much smaller 
quantity of food than we are accustomed to, if 
properly selected, prepared, 'and well digested, 
will amply suffice, and that today, in this country, 
the danger to both pupils and teachers is probably 
that of over-eating rather than that of being under- 
fed. It is especially necessary also — and here is 
where the trained skill of the conscientious teacher 
may prove most effective— not to let limits be passed 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 55 

beyond, where temporary fatigue results in perma- 
nent brain exhaustion. Since varied attention dis- 
tributes, as it were, the results of fatigue over sev- 
eral areas, we have the practical rule that to vary 
the forms of attention given to essentially the same 
subject, and to shift from visual to auditory, and 
then to motor attention, is good practise in the 
interests of brain economy. 

One other important principle of the physiologi- 
cal theory of interest and attention, which the con- 
scientious and intelligent teacher is sure to employ, 
deserves mention in this connection. It is highly 
probable that every excitement of interest and every 
act of attention, if objectively directed, has some 
motor accompaniment. This is to say, that we 
can not attend to any object in an interested way, 
without a constant adjustment of our museukr 
organism to that particular object. "We see, and 
hear, and locate, and know what things are and 
what they are doing, only as we are able to move 
the organs with which we do our seeing, hearing, 
locating, and learning of the nature and doings of 
things. The human infant has probably had some 
sensations due to its movements in the womb of 
its mother. But, however this may be, we know 
that the healthy infant, as soon as born, is launched 
on a sea of ceaseless movement. While awake, it is 
always squirming, winking, rolling its eyes and 
head about, reaching and striking with its arms, 



56 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

and kicking with its legs. In this way alone can it 
learn its own Self and the world of its environ- 
ment. And when the infant becomes a learned 
adult, and is seated in the study planning books, 
or in the office laying plans for the capture of a 
railroad or of an empire, we have good reason to 
believe that every mental image and every train of 
associated thoughts, has its proper motor accom- 
paniment and support. 

"We see, then, that the excitement of interest and 
the training of attention are not possible without 
taking into the account this motor apparatus. It 
should be called into service, and trained in serv- 
ice, in the pursuit of every kind of knowledge. 
[While we can not let the pupils talk and walk 
about and act as freely in all ways, as some of our 
kindergartens and educational experiment stations 
have thought it wise to do ; and while we need not 
admire and imitate the schools in the mosques of 
Mohammedan countries, where all the scholars are 
swaying themselves back and forth and repeating 
discordant passages of the Koran, we should learn 
that the eifort to suppress all motion in the school- 
room is 'as foolish as it is cruel. Indeed, since in 
my adult life, I have had opportunity to renew the 
impressions of my youth, as the hearer rather than 
the speaker, both in the church and in the class- 
room, I am more and more inclined to sympathize 
with the pupil when he is inordinately represt. 



TEE FUNCTION OF TEE TEACEEB 67 

In general, the physiological theory of interest 
and attention— so far as we oan properly speak of 
any such theory— affords grounds both for caution 
and for encouragement. The human brain, and 
especially the brain of the child, is an inconceivably 
complex and delicate piece of mechanism. It may 
be quickly injured 'and placed in a condition from 
which recovery will be slow and difficult, or even 
impossible. It may be by nature so constituted as 
to admit of only a very much hampered and quite 
Strictly limited development. Its handling, as it is 
given into the hands of the professional teacher 
to handle it, demands more conscientious care, and 
scarcely less trained skill, than are demanded by 
the most delicately constructed piece of physical 
mechanism. But, on the other hand, the more we 
learn about the possibilities of results from 
improved opportunities and improved methods, the 
more we may be encouraged. We shall never, 
indeed, escape the necessity of time; never remove 
all natural obstacles and inborn differences. Some 
of our pupils will always be handicapped by the 
inheritance of a disordered or inferior central 
nervous system. They can not be interested in 
learning under instruction, or be made to give 
attention, as others of their schoolmates can. But 
the human brain, properly treated, will stand an 
immense amount of work, not only without injury, 
but with positive profit. Indeed, idle brains are 



58 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

not apt to be healthy brains. The brain can be 
improved and '* toughened'' by judiciously directed 
exercise, as truly, altho not in the same way, as 
muscle can. And in my judgment, we are scarcely 
on the threshold of the discovery of what economies 
are necessary to make our system of public and uni- 
versity education count for manifold times the 
value of its present products. 

I am going to speak now of the subject as 
approached from the side of feeling. And in the 
widest acceptation of the word * 'feeling," it is this 
side of the subject which it is of the most practical, 
immediate value to know more about. Let us con- 
sider, then, the Emotional Conditions of Attention 
and the Conditions of the Emotion of Interest. 
Plainly, it is here— namely, in the realm of feeling 
and emotion— that interest and attention have their 
place of meeting. The ordinarily accepted rule is 
that voluntary attention varies, in its intensity and 
direction, in dependence upon the rise and fall, and 
the direction, of interest. From this supposed law 
has been deduced the practical maxim, which 
imposes upon the teacher the duty of, by all means, 
exciting the interest of the pupil in order thus to 
get control over the attention. This has been car- 
ried to such an extreme as to make the principal, 
and in certain instances, almost the only marked 
qualification required of the teacher, the power to 
excite a great amount of interest. When enforced 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 69 

in unrestricted fashion, this maxim may— as I 
have already indicated— result in putting upon the 
profession, a most mischievous, intolerable, and 
absurd burden. It is part of the general tendency 
in our entire system of education in this country, 
which is now — ^there is reason to believe— being 
recognized as extreme and so is being opposed, to 
make all life and all training for life, as easy and 
pleasant as possible. But man's environment is 
not constituted in this way. And whatever changes 
he may, through his enterprise and his scientific 
attainments, succeed in making in this environment, 
he will never succeed in getting all the roughness 
out of it. It is abundantly fortunate, in the inter- 
ests of the higher forms of human development, 
and in the practise of many of the nobler virtues, 
and in the building of admirable character, that 
all this is so. If the races which pride themselves 
upon being superior do not heed, and act upon this 
truth, they will be supplanted, in due time, by 
the more vigorous and still enduring of the races. 

There is obvious truth in the demand that the 
teacher should try to get the emotion of interest 
enlisted in the awakening and training of the atten- 
tion. Indeed, the truth is so obvious, and has been 
of late so much insisted upon, that I need do 
scarcely more than mention it. But there is 
another, even more important, but much neglected 
principle, which is also intimately related to this 



60 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

particular function of the teacher. The highest 
and most effective kind of interest itself can not be 
obtained without such discipline of attention as 
shall end in being productive of a pleasurable inter- 
est. In other words: If the culture of attention 
depends on the excitement of interest, it is equally 
true that the excitement and culture of the right 
kind of interest depend upon the discipline of 
attention. On the whole subject, then, the follow- 
ing considerations should, I think, serve to guide 
the teacher who wishes to have his practise corre- 
spond to the principles that apply to this species of 
personal intercourse. 

Before we approve of the excitement of interest 
in any particular case, we need always to inquire : 
*' Toward precisely what is this interest, when 
excited, going to be directed V^ It is always easy, 
especially with children and youth, to excite some 
stir of interest, in some kind of a thing. A blase 
condition of mind is as rare as it is unnatural with 
this class of persons. To be interested, and even 
enthusiastic, is, the rather, the natural condition 
in their case. But what kind of interest ; and inter- 
est in what ? To make it the right kind of interest 
in the desired object^ this is not an easy task for 
the person who is the appointed stimulator and 
director of interest, in the way of a genuine edu- 
cation. I repeat, we can reckon on the boy or girl 
being excited to interest in something ; and we can 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 61 

be sure that every boy and girl, however seemingly 
stupid, is attending to something— unless, indeed, 
the pupil has fallen fast asleep in our classroom. 
But what we want is to excite the interest and con- 
trol the attention along certain definite lines, con- 
tributory to a real increase in the right kind of 
knowledge, and to the development of the right 
kind of character. Let us not deceive ourselves, 
then, by our skill and success in keeping our 
pupils interested. Some of the poorest teachers, 
as judged by the net, permanent and valuable 
results of their work, have had the most reputation 
for being "interesting." On the other hand, of 
course, "deadly dull" is a phrase which easily 
explains itself, when applied to the effect of the 
teacher's personal intercourse with his pupils. 

Another psychological principle bids us remem- 
ber that excessive emotional excitement, even in 
the form of interest in the right sort of a sub- 
ject, and at the proper time, is often extremely 
prejudicial to the exercise and cultivation of the 
right kind of attention. The direction of the atten- 
tion to just the right points for observation and 
commitment to memory, and the application of 
cool judgment in discrimination, are not compatible 
with a great and sudden stirring of excited emo- 
tions of interest. Thus, the attempt really to 
instruct by the vivid picturing of objects, without 
taking time for the calm and somewhat detailed 



62 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

explanation of the meaning to intellect of what the 
eye seizes upon with an excited interest, may lead 
to its failure as a means of genuine education. The 
new method of picturing everything which is being 
extended to the proposal to refine, morally, and 
even to convert the people, by showing them pic- 
tures of Biblical scenery and incidents, has its 
reasonable side and prospect of profit in the inter- 
ests of education. But, overworked and relied upon 
too exclusively, it is doomed to issue in disap- 
pointment. And one or two pictures that do not 
move, but stay there until they can be explained 
and learned in something approaching their full 
significance, are worth far more than a score of 
diverting and rapidly moving pictures. The latter, 
indeed, however much they may do in the way of 
exciting interest and attracting attention, may be 
misleading and mischievous as respects the more 
valuable ends of education. 

And now I am going to call your attention to 
another psychological principle, which is even more 
important, but which has hitherto been almost 
entirely overlooked in the recent discussions of edu- 
cational methods. In many classes of objects, and 
in many cases among all classes of pupils— espe- 
cially where attention requires hard work to be 
done — interest is rather the result than the precon- 
dition of training attention. I repeat here, that 
the average human being, especially when young, 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 63 

is naturally active, but does not love work. To 
work and to be * ' irked ' ' are one and the same thing 
with him. But Nature makes him work. To use 
the vulgar but expressive way of stating this truth : 
With man, as with all the animals, it is ''Root hog, 
or die." The average child is not pleased to work. 
The average college student does not elect, of his 
own uninstructed good pleasure, the courses that 
compel him to do hard work. If he did, there 
would be a complete upsetting of all the class sta- 
tistics as to favorite teachers, popular courses, and 
all that sort of thing. But neither child nor college 
student can be educated without being made to 
work ; and one of the special aims of education, and 
special triumphs of the really successful teacher, 
is to train the pupil so that he will take pleasure in 
work. The rule ought to be reversed then ; it ought 
to read— not *'Let the pupil do what it pleases him 
to do," — but *'Let the pupil be disciplined in some 
kind of work, until he takes pleasure in the work." 
All that I have said against making the awaken- 
ing of interest an end in itself, and against the rat- 
ing of teachers too much by their reputation for 
being entertaining and able to excite a great 
amount of a certain kind of interest, and against 
the excessive, — ^not to say, exclusive use in educa- 
tion, of means that so often end merely in the 
excitement of interest, — all this is not to be under- 
stood as underestimating the importance of this 



64 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

particular function of the professional teacher. It 
is most important, and desirable, and even indis- 
pensable to the success of the teacher, that he 
should be able to excite a certain measure of inter- 
est in the subjects he is teaching; and, indeed, in 
the whole matter of education in every branch 
and department of it. This lecture, we must not 
forget, is based upon the assumption, that one of 
the most important of all the offices of the teacher 
is just this— namely, to be an exciter and director 
of interest, and in this way to direct and discipline 
the powers of attention. 

But how shall this be done V I do not doubt 
that every one of my hearers has asked this ques- 
tion of himself and of others, over and over again. 
Some of us have asked it, as about the most puz- 
zling and anxious question which we could possibly 
put. And so I hasten to assure you that, in my 
judgment, the conscientious teachers of the country 
—and this class includes the majority of the teach- 
ers of this country— have on the whole come to feel 
too keenly the obligation to answer this question in 
a practical way. I should be the last person to 
disavow, or even to lessen, the teacher's moral 
responsibility for the character and the results of 
his work. This course of lectures has its aim in 
just the opposite direction. At the same time, I do 
not at all believe that it is the teacher's duty, or 
within the teacher's power, to make everything 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 65 

interesting to all of those on whom liis function 
is exercised. Some of the pupils will never have 
much genuine interest in the subjects which he is 
appointed to teach. Not a few of them will never 
be interested in anything that involves downright 
hard work. Believing this to be true, and also 
knowing that the varied practical problems which 
vex us so much do not all admit of giving rules for 
their solution, but are matters which belong to the 
intuitions of a so-called tactful person, I shall con- 
tent myself with a few suggestions. 

And, first : Whenever it is possible, attention and 
voluntary and attentive discrimination should be 
called out and directed in connection with the use of 
the senses and motor mechanism. This is especially 
true of the beginning stages of education or of any 
particular study. To use their own senses and 
motor organs upon things is, other conditions being 
at all equal, the most interesting way for children 
and even for adults to learn about things. What 
the eye sees, the ear hears, the hands manipu- 
late, that is likely to excite most interest, and to 
attract and fix the most prolonged and intelligent 
attention; and so to be most thoroughly learned. 
But all this has been so much emphasized in modem 
educational theory, and is so undisputed, that I do 
not need to speak of the matter with any detail. 

This teaching by concrete example, however, has 
certain dangers. There is the danger of failing to 



66 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHIL080PH7 

observe the more important likenesses and unlike- 
nesses of things. And there is the danger of imper- 
fect or erroneous use of the imagination. Against 
these and other similar dangers connected with the 
use of such means for exciting interest, it is the 
office of the teacher to protect the pupil. 

Other forms of the natural emotions may be 
sparingly and judiciously appealed to in the effort 
to awaken interest, and to train attentive discrimi- 
nation. Among these, are the spirit of rivalry, the 
pleasure of self-approbation and of the approba- 
tion of others, etc., etc. This use of *' ulterior 
motives," however, should be subordinated to the 
higher motives, as promptly and completely as can 
well be, if the teacher wishes to realize the most 
worthy aims of his peculiar opportunities for per- 
sonal influence. These most worthy aims call for 
the awakening and direction of an interested atten- 
tion in the worthiest and noblest objects. These 
are, of course, such as belong to the pursuit of 
personal and social ideals. 

Again, the teacher must always remember that it 
is his own profound and intelligent interest in, and 
disciplined attention to, his own work, on which the 
chief reliance must be placed for arousing and 
directing the interest of his pupils. The teacher 
who is not profoundly interested in his own fitness, 
and in the manner of his own work, and in his 
professional ideals, can scarcely have any confi- 



THE FUHGTION OF TEE TEACHER 67 

dence in his success in arousing an interest in simi- 
lar matters on the part of his pupils. Here again 
we discover how wide in the range of its applica- 
tion is the thought that the successful exercise of 
the teaching function is a matter of personal rela- 
tions and depends upon personal character. 

And, finally, the more ultimate aim of the excite- 
ment and guidance of interest, and the discipline of 
the power of giving attention, is the development 
of that complex of qualities which is sometimes 
called by the one word ^'Will." This complex of 
activities is, as one of the great German theologians 
once said, * * The heart of the heart that is in man. * ' 
As a man wills, so in the most essential aspects, is 
he. In spite of all psycho-physical and economic 
theories, the supremacy of the so-called will, in the 
determination of human individual character, 
human society, and human destiny, I believe to 
rest on valid grounds of experience. And in the 
earlier stages of education, the training of atten- 
tion is almost synonymous with the training of the 
will. Here the teacher is working at the very foun- 
dations of character. But to the consideration of 
this subject I shall return more than once again. 



LECTURE IV 

THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER: 
AS IMPARTING KNOWLEDGE 

There is no other question which is more promptly 
and universally asked of us than this: '*Are the 
scholars learning anything!'' Does, or does not, 
the pupil come to know more on account of his 
intercourse with the teacher? Or, to reverse the 
point of view: the good and successful teacher is, 
other things being at all equal, the one who imparts 
most of knowledge to those committed to his charge. 
And, indeed, for what other purpose than just this 
are they committed, in the first instance, to his 
charge? The correlate of teaching is learning, 
and the business of the teacher is to make the pupil 
learn. The popular impression on this subject is 
illustrated in an amusing way by the grammati- 
cally vulgar, but practically shrewd, use of the 
verb *^to learn'' as a transitive verb. The teacher 
ought to ** learn his scholars something," or he is 
no teacher at all. 

This view of the teacher's peculiar function, 
when understood in this unqualified way, is only 
partially true. But there can be no doubt that the 
imparting of knowledge is one of the most impor- 

68 



TEE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 69 

tant of the several ends which the work of educa- 
tion must have in view. The mere excitement of 
interest, and the mere cultivation of the power of 
giving attention, are not ends in themselves. They 
are means which are indispensable for attaining 
any considerable increase in a knowledge of one's 
Self and of one's physical and social environment. 
Of course, children are sent to the public schools 
in order that they may be allured or compelled to 
learn; and those who go voluntarily to the higher 
institutions of learning have no business there, 
unless they go and remain there in order to learn. 
The many puzzling problems which the teacher 
has to solve regarding the best ways to impart 
knowledge require for their theoretical solution, 
more than anything else, a correct conception of 
the nature of knowledge, and an acquaintance with 
the laws of its development. And there are, in 
my judgment, more failures in the exercise of this 
function on the part of us teachers, which are due 
to faulty ideas on this subject, than to any other 
single mental deficiency. Unless we have ourselves 
some adequate knowledge of the nature of knowl- 
edge, we can not intelligently practise the art of 
imparting knowledge. In certain fortunate cases, 
natural tact may largely compensate for the defi- 
ciency in science. Many of the rest of our pro- 
fession may blunder into a tolerable degree of skill 
in the exercise of this particular function. But 



70 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

too many, alas ! will never know whether they have 
knowledge themselves, or whether what they are 
imparting to their pupils is genuine knowledge, 
or whether they are imparting the knowledge which 
they do succeed in imparting, in the most eco- 
nomical and effective way. I ask your attention, 
then, to a discussion, which is of necessity some- 
what dry and technical, of 

THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE 

And, first of all, let us look at the matter from 
the psychological point of view. And here I am 
obliged to confess that there is very little in those 
text-books on psychology which are most accessible 
to the multitude of teachers, and which are most 
popular and most entertaining, to which I can refer 
you as at all satisfactory. Every adult human being 
has a so-called ''store"— a certain amount of sev- 
eral kinds of knowledge. Without this, he would 
not be human at all ; without this he could not have 
human intercourse with other men, could not con- 
stitute a part of human, social environment. 
Whether any of the lower animals ever attain to 
the slightest knowledge essentially like human 
knowledge, remains at present, and perhaps for- 
ever must remain, an open question. The animals 
have sensations, feelings, a certain form of intelli- 
gence and of self-control. But all these do not, of 
necessity, equip the being that has them, for the 
attainment of genuine knowledge— much less, for 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 71 

any real growth of knowledge in the higher forms 
of science and reflective thinking. 

Since every adult human being has the experi- 
ence of knowledge, it is only natural, and in a 
measure perfectly just, that every one should think 
that he knows what it is to know. But, to deter- 
mine and describe the exact nature, more important 
conditions, and the laws of the development of 
what we call "knowledge," involves all the most 
profound and obscure problems of psychology and 
philosophy. 

The following remarks must suffice, however, for 
my present purpose. Every act of knowledge in- 
volves the functioning of all the so-called faculties 
of the mind in a sort of living unity. If we adopt, 
without stopping to criticize it, the ordinary three- 
fold division of these faculties, we may say that 
intellect, feeling, and will, are all energizing 
together in every act of knowledge. This is essen- 
tially true in the case of the most receptive and 
seemingly passive attitudes of mind. Knowing is 
never mere receptivity or passivity. This might be 
illustrated by the very meaning of the words and 
phrases which we employ in connection with the 
pursuit and acquisition of knowledge— irrespective 
of its degree and of its kind. Do you *'take," or 
''take in" the idea? Do you ** grasp," or ** ap- 
prehend" the meaning of the spoken or the printed 
word; or the nature and uses of the object? Do 



72 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

you ''get into," or "get around/' or comprehend 
the meaning of the speaker, or the nature and solu- 
tion of the particular scientific or social problem? 
All these, and all similar phrases, imply as some- 
thing quite beyond doubt, that without activity 
there is to be no knowledge or growth of knowledge. 
For knowledge can not be dumped or given over 
ready-made, into any mind. 

Another aspect of the same truth is brought to 
our attention when we recall how readily people 
distinguish between the conditions of mind involved 
in "seeing" and "looking," "hearing" and "lis- 
tening," "feeling" and "handling," or what psy- 
chologists sometimes call "active and passive 
touch"; and as well, the exhortations: "jTr^/ to 
think or to understand." 

If I were lecturing upon the psychology of 
knowledge, instead of n^erely referring to the 
nature of knowledge in order to get ground of 
standing for some practical rules for the teacher 
in the discharge of his function of imparting 
knowledge, I should undertake to show how intel- 
lect, feeling and will are all involved in cognition ; 
and this in many different but important ways. 
I shall content myself with a word or two upon 
each of these three — ^namely, the intellectual, the 
emotional, and the voluntary— aspects of all knowl- 
edge. As it is, there shall be only a sentence or two 
about each of the three. There is no knowledge 



TEE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 73 

without discrimination ; that is, without a noticing 
of similarities and differences. Now, it is only 
active intellect that can discriminate ; indeed, it is 
not improper to speak of intellect as essentially, 
"discriminating faculty." And, of course, there 
can be no development of knowledge, no growth of 
science, without reasoning. But by intellect is 
commonly understood, the so-called * ' reasoning fac- 
ulty." Forms of emotion accompany and guide all 
the work of the intellect in its work of discrimi- 
nating and reasoning. And underlying all knowl- 
edge, there are certain forms of conviction, or 
belief, which are more fitly described in terms of 
feeling than in any other way. Finally— as we have 
already been frequently reminded— all attention in- 
volves volition, as necessary to making it concen- 
trated, selective, and discriminating. 

A second important truth, on our confidence 
in which we must place certain of the most indis- 
pensable rules for the guidance of the professional 
teacher in his efforts to impart knowledge to his 
pupils, is this: All knowledge, even the single act 
of knowledge, is a development, a growth. 

In the earliest psychic life of the infant, there 
are evidences of vague, fleeting, fitful states of 
consciousness ; but there can be no such experience 
as that of knowing anything, or about anything. 
The new-bom infant knows nothing— neither its 
Self, nor other persons, nor things. It must learn 



74 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

to know each member of its own body, as apart 
from the other members, as its very own, and as 
a part of its body. It must learn to know each 
thing as not any part of its own body; what it is, 
and what each thing can do to it ; what it can do to 
each thing ; and what things can do to one another. 
But the same law of growth applies to every indi- 
vidual act of knowledge. No sight or visual image, 
no apprehension— not to say, fuller comprehen- 
sion—of the meaning of any sound is an instan- 
taneous affair. We attain true conceptions of all 
things only as products of a growing knowledge. 
And the development of our knowledge of our- 
selves, of other persons, and of other things, is 
never complete. For the teacher, as well as the 
pupil, growth in knowledge is ceaselessly to be 
sought for and to be expected. Such growth comes, 
not simply through the acquiring of new items of 
information, but also by the correction of erroneous 
and only partially true judgments, by harmonizing 
and systematizing seemingly contradictory judg- 
ments, and by adapting our feelings of conviction 
to the character and the degree of evidence. It is, 
then, our duty, as coming under the unchanging 
principles of the practical philosophy which applies 
to the special kind of personal intercourse, in which 
our profession consists, never to cease using any 
of these means for the growth of knowledge in our- 
selves and in our pupils. 



THE FUNCTION OP THE TEACHER 75 

But in this connection must be borne in mind 
another psychological truth which elucidates the 
nature of human knowledge. All knowledge is 
relative. To this proposition various meanings 
have been attached, and from it various deductions, 
both theoretical and practical, have been drawn. 
Some writers have pressed this principle of the 
relativity of all knowledge to such an extreme as 
to deny, virtually, the possibility of all knowledge. 
Or they have tried, while excluding from the realm 
of possible knowledge all the subjects dear to those 
interested in morals and religion, to reserve the 
right to claim something only remotely resembling 
what people ordinarily understand by the term, for 
the students of physical phenomena. On the other 
hand, since they were unable to recognize the dif- 
ferences in degrees and kinds and certainties attach- 
ing themselves to all man's cognitive experiences, 
others have assumed to demonstrate truths of 
morals and religion after the fashion applicable 
only to matters of "pure" mathematics. In doing 
this they have forgotten that truths of morals and 
religion have to do with conduct; and that the 
''purer," or freer from all practical considerations 
and applications any branch of mathematics is, the 
more useless it is in the conduct of human affairs. 

Any detailed discussion of this difficult subject 
would be quite out of place in this connection. But 
there are two or three aspects of the principle of 



76 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the relativity of knowledge which have a direct 
bearing upon that particular function of the teacher 
which consists in the imparting of knowledge. In 
the first place : Both gaining and giving knowledge 
involve the mind^s relating activity. Only as we 
actively relate things to us and to each other, are 
we able to recognize them or to know anything 
about them. Knowing is, essentially considered, a 
relating activity. Still further: In imparting 
knowledge, there is no conveyance of absolute truth 
to be sought for or to be expected. In order to get 
imparted at all, the knowledge must be related to 
the case in hand, as it were. In some sort, every bit 
of knowledge must be made, and must remain, the 
individual's very own. There is no most general 
statement, or law— there is not even a,ny particular 
fact, which means precisely the same thing for 
everybody who, as we say, knows it. 

Such statements as I have just made may seem, 
at first sight, rather obscure and confusing. But I 
shall have to trust to your reflections upon them in 
order to make the practical rules which follow from 
the principle of the relativity of knowledge, and 
which will soon claim our attention, more clearly 
obvious and more helpful. 

Let us now turn our attention to certain rules, 
which are founded upon the nature of knowledge 
as its doctrine has just been so insufficiently ex- 
pounded. We see now what is the primary and 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 77 

chief aim of tlie teacher in his efforts to arouse 
interest and to direct and discipline the attention. 
The teacher is working to get the pupil to work. 
The imparter of knowledge is trying to put the 
recipient of the knowledge into such a frame of 
mind that this function of education may be, in 
fact, realized. The principle involved is this: A 
purely recipient or passive human being cannot be 
made the subject of knowledge. Knowledge can 
not be given from one mind to another, can not be 
passed between two minds, as a piece of land may 
be conveyed by will, or a book may be sent by the 
post, from one person to another. Unless the relat- 
ing activities of the pupil's mind can be stirred 
and guided to do their part in the compound trans- 
action, the teacher may know, never so well, and 
the teacher may strive never so hard and skilfully, 
but no imparting of real knowledge will take place. 
And if the interest awakened, and the attention 
secured, are to culminate in the pupil's making 
some real and valuable acquisition of knowledge, 
then all the various powers of the pupil's mind, 
which are necessary to the completion of an act of 
knowledge must somehow be enlisted. This fact 
unites the function of the teacher which consists in 
the imparting knowledge with his function in train- 
ing the pupil's faculties — a subject that will occupy 
us in the next lecture. 

I turn aside here for a moment in order to intro- 



78 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

duce a truth which constitutes the severest possible 
criticism of much of our entire system of modern 
education; and to which reference will several 
times be made in this course of lectures. We have 
gone to an extreme in the effort, which when mod- 
erated and controlled is laudable enough, to make 
everything attractive and easy for those under- 
going the process of education. In deference to 
weak stomachs, pre-digested foods have become all 
the rage. In the rivalries of trade which have 
resulted from this effort, we have quite forgotten 
that nature assigned to the human stomach, as well 
as to the stomachs of all the animals blest, or 
curst, with this organ, precisely this work of 
digesting the necessary amount of the right kind of 
food. And so, of late, the physiologists have been 
reminding us that the excessive use of predigested 
food weakens the digestive apparatus by depriving 
it of its legitimate business. I do not need to 
expound this parable at any length, in order for 
you to *' catch on" to its meaning. But I give my 
unqualified testimony to the impression that a large 
majority of those who take the examinations for 
entering college, and a scarcely smaller proportion 
of those who graduate from college, are educated in 
the way of having a mixed host of confused ideas 
and unverifiable impressions, on an unnecessary 
and absurd variety of subjects, which are not prop-' 
erly related in their minds, rather than a well- 



THE FUNCTIOHf OF THE TEACHER 79 

ordered system of verifiable knowledge, of which 
they know how to make use to the end of acquiring 
more of such knowledge, or of conducting their 
lives in accordance with the principles of science 
and morality. And the most important reason for 
this lamentable condition is the fact that their 
teachers, however much they have wished to do so, 
and however clearly they have recognized the abso- 
lute necessity of doing so, have not been able, for 
one reason or another, to solicit or to compel their 
pupils to do their part of the work of being edu- 
cated. 

The developmental, or evolutionary, character 
of knowledge gives conditions to which all the 
work of the teacher must conform, in his effort to 
impart knowledge to those who are committed to 
his care for purposes of education. Upon this 
same principle, of the growth of all knowledge, in 
the individual and in the race, the form given to 
the entire system of education must depend. 

The studies selected for teaching must be in cor- 
respondence with the stage of the development of 
the pupil who is to be taught. This rule is equally 
applicable, whether the state or the individual 
teacher has the selection of studies and the disposal 
of the entire curriculum. Where the election is 
committed to the pupil, the same rule ought, so far 
as is possible in such a case, to be rigidly enforced. 
One of the principal objections to anything resem- 



80 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

bling an unlimited election on the pupil's part 
arises from the difficulty of applying this principle, 
under such conditions. It is notably easier to 
match the teaching to the stage of the development 
of the person taught, when the selection of subjects 
and methods is determined from above rather than 
when it is elected from below. 

In all our attempts to apply this rule, however, 
there is risk in two directions. There is confes- 
sedly the danger of over-rating the capacity of 
the pupil— and for that matter, of the teacher— 
with respect to the exercise of this function of 
imparting knowledge. This risk is especially great 
in certain subjects, and in the use of certain meth- 
ods of instruction. No teacher, for example, has 
knowledge or skill enough to succeed in this branch 
of the educative process, in any of the particular 
sciences, or in the study of any of the languages, by 
the method of lecturing alone. And where this 
method is almost exclusively employed, the secret 
motive being that the teacher likes to hear his own 
voice, or is proud of making the impression upon 
callow youth that his own information is special, 
independent, and original, the procedure comes 
very near to being as immoral as it is sure to be 
ineffective, when judged by the result of a real 
imparting of knowledge. It is, in general, not the 
teacher who talks most, who also teaches most. 

The conscientious teacher, however, often finds 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 81 

himself appointed and virtually compelled to teach 
a kind or variety of subjects, that is quite beyond 
his own stage in growth of knowledge, and hope- 
lessly beyond the stage in development reached by 
most of his pupils. He can not well resign without 
injustice to himself and to those who have appointed 
him. He may honestly think it better that the 
studies should not be taught at all, than that they 
should be taught by such a teacher to such pupils. 
But he has no influence to bring about a change 
in this matter. What in such a case shall the 
teacher do, who takes the point of view set up by 
practical philosophy for the discharge of his office 
in a dutiful way ? This is often a hard question to 
answer. If his pupils are rather mature, he may 
somewhat frankly pursue the study as their fellow 
pupil— going a little ahead of them, but far enough 
to be a helpful guide. If they are too young and 
immature for the successful pursuit of the franker 
method, and can be taught at all only by a sort of 
assumption of authority, the teacher must do the 
best he can to grow himself in the required knowl- 
edge and to adapt the imparting of what he learns 
in a manner adapted to their condition of ignor- 
ance. I suppose it is impossible for the teacher 
wholly to avoid, with a certain intent which can 
not be condemned as malicious, deliberately mak- 
ing the impression upon his pupils that he does 
know certain things which in reality he does not 



82 THE TEACHBM'8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

know; and which, perhaps, nobody knows. With 
advanced pupils he can keep on giving and acquir- 
ing evidence, and stating degrees of evidence and 
of probability; but with children he can not teach 
in that way. 

It is a comfort, then, to mention a risk which is 
the opposite of that to which I have just been call- 
ing your attention. For there is such a risk ; and it 
is well for us to bear it in mind. This is the risk 
of under-estimating the pupil's capacity for devel- 
oping, as respects the different forms of knowledge 
and science, if teaching skilfully adapted to his 
present stage of development can be secured. Talk- 
ing down to children is, on the whole, a little worse 
than talking up to children. How often do we hear 
of children, not at all above the average brightness 
or culture of others of their own age, who are dis- 
gusted rather than instructed, by the drivel to 
which they are subjected by the kindergartners 
set over them. The wisdom of Aristotle is not too 
great for the teacher of young children. And some 
of Aristotle's wisdom can be taken in, if properly 
adapted, by young children. 

What is true of subjects is also true of methods 
of education. The methods of teaching employed 
must take into account the stage of development 
reached by both teacher and pupil. To choose, and 
to put into successful practical operation, the right 
methods of teaching, for each subject and for each 



TEE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 83 

class, makes the most severe demands upon the expe- 
rience and tact of the teacher. Different subjects 
require different methods; and so do different 
classes of pupils, with their differences in age, apti- 
tude, and culture. Different teachers succeed best, 
even in the same subjects and with the same classes, 
by the use of different methods. Oral instruction 
is better in one case; silent study, in other cases. 
In some subjects, as taught by some persons, the 
nearly exclusive use of text-book must be relied 
upon to do what is better done in other cases, either 
by a combination of text-book and quiz, or largely 
by the method of lecturing or holding of semi- 
naries. So pertinent and far-reaching is the appli- 
cation of this principle that the method of teaching 
must take account of the development of both 
teacher and pupil. 

The system of public education which will be 
adapted to the most perfect success in preparing the 
citizens of both sexes for their place in their differ- 
ent spheres of the national life must be carried on 
in accordance with the principle we are now consid- 
ering: AH knowledge is subject to development. 
This principle fixes with a certain degree of perma- 
nency the subjects and the methods of education 
which belong to the different ages, conditions of 
health and social position, and corresponding stages 
in development, of the persons who are undergoing 
the process of education. Ancestral, sexual, and 



84 THE TEACHER' 8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

social, as well as more individual differences, 
always do, and always will, operate to give condi- 
tions to the growth., both physical and mental, of 
the multitude of children and youth educated in 
our public schools. To a certain extent, especially 
in the primary stages of their development, they 
must all be educated together. This means that the 
same subjects, the same methods, the same teachers, 
and the same text-books, must serve for all who are 
in the same grade or the same classroom. The 
assumption is that all are to be treated as tho they 
had already reached about the same stage in the 
growth of intellect, and in the susceptibility for 
further growth, if given the same opportunities and 
treated with the same kind of culture. But the 
assumption is, of course, never more than very 
partially true. The rough expedient is, then, to 
adapt the subjects and the methods to the average, 
to hold back the backward and compel them to go 
over again what we euphemeously call **the same 
grade''; and, perhaps, if there is room in the grade 
above, to advance to it the brighter ones, somewhat 
prematurely. But now we are beginning to see 
that the dull and backward ones ought to have some 
special form of culture, which shall be adapted to 
their capacity for development; that it may be 
well to recognize differences in the prospective call- 
ings and so-called social position of those who are in 
process of education— in a word, to arrange for 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 85 

their development so as to fit it to life ; that differ- 
ent special capacities and unusual talents ought 
somehow to have provision made for their special 
culture; and that when sexual differences begin to 
show their more obvious influence, provision ought 
to be made in the educative process, for recogniz- 
ing these differences. All this, those who control 
the system of public education in the country have, 
as yet, recognized in only a very imperfect and 
hesitating way. But they are already seeing the 
outlines of the difficult problem which is involved in 
the effort to combine what is relatively permanent 
with what is always changing, under the physical, 
social, and financial conditions that limit our edu- 
cational system. 

The same principle of the developmental char- 
acter of all human knowledge necessitates the un- 
ceasing effort at improvement in our methods, and 
in our entire system of education. As you know 
perfectly well: The entire system of education in 
this country, from nursery and kindergarten to the 
graduate and professional schools, is being sub- 
jected to the most unsparing criticism. It has also 
been subjected to such rapid, and often ill-consid- 
ered changes, that it has fallen into a somewhat 
unorganized and, in spots, almost chaotic condition. 
Doubtless, something of this disquieting sort was 
made inevitable by the wonderful development of 
the world's knowledge, especially in the form of 



86 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the positive and historical sciences, during the last 
one hundred years. We know of more undisclosed 
secrets of nature, of the human soul, and the past 
history of the race, than were ever dreamed of 
before. The sphere of the unknown seems larger 
than ever before. But there has also been a great 
increase in the comprehensiveness, clearness, and 
accuracy of human knowledge. How to get the 
most available of this new and rapidly growing 
knowledge into our modern system of education is 
a most puzzling practical problem. 

It is not my present purpose to take part in any 
of the critical discussion to which reference has 
just been made. But I wish again to call your 
attention to the rules for practise which follow 
from the principles I have laid down as to the 
nature of knowledge, and as to the teacher's func- 
tion in the imparting of knowledge. "Without stir- 
ring the learner's mind to an interested and prop- 
erly directed activity, no knowledge of any sort 
can be imparted or acquired ; and without adapting 
our subjects and our methods to the conditions 
which inexorably limit all hiunan development, no 
real growth of knowledge on the pupil's part can 
possibly take place. In these respects, the new 
has no superiority to the old. Nor is much any 
better than little. Indeed, a little really and thor- 
oughly known, is far better than smatterings and 



TEE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 87 

surmises and va^e opinions unbased on evidence, 
about things many and various. 

Many of the rules for the practical guidance of 
the teacher in the exercise of his function as impart- 
ing knowledge, are essentially the same when they 
are looked at from the point of view established 
by the relativity of knowledge, as those already 
reviewed from the standpoint of the developmental 
nature of all knowledge. But there is one rule, or 
rather, set of rules, which I wish to make a little 
clearer in this connection. In the first and second 
lectures I laid down this principle as at the foun- 
dation of the entire course of lectures : Teaching is, 
essentially considered, a species of intercourse 
between two persons. In the imparting of knowl- 
edge the principle of relativity must always be 
recognized. But no two teachers are exactly alike ; 
and no two pupils are exactly alike. Every pair, 
composed, as it is, of pupil and teacher, is therefore, 
a special case. From this it follows that teachers 
can not reasonably be expected all to follow pre- 
cisely the same methods in teaching; and precisely 
the same methods can not be equally successful 
with all pupils. Progressive adaptation of teacher 
and pupil is approximately the best solution of the 
very difficult problems which are proposed for prac- 
tical testing by every system of education. 

I close this lecture with certain suggestions 
toward the more comfortable and truly successful 



88 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

regulation of the daily conduct of the classroom, 
in the attempt to secure a genuine growth of knowl- 
edge as the result of our teaching. The teacher has 
unceasing and large demands made upon his 
patience, with himself and with his pupils— the 
former, often times, still more than the latter. The 
conscientious teacher is constantly called upon for 
large drafts of patience, by his backward or refrac- 
tory pupils. But he is not so apt to remember that 
he owes it to himself to be patient with himself. 
In the growth of knowledge— on the teacher's part, 
and on the pupil's part — time must be allowed. 
Knowledge is a slow growth; often times, it is an 
irregular and imperceptible growth. 

The teacher must cultivate insight into personal 
character. This implies self-knowledge— the know- 
ing of one's strong points as well as of one's weak 
points. It also involves as much as possible of 
acquaintance with the individual characteristics of 
the pupils under his charge — the knowing of them 
''one by one." 

The teacher must strive to acquire intelligence 
and tact with regard to all the best methods of 
teaching. But here we must always remember that 
method is not something that can be learned off- 
hand, as it were, from one person by another. The 
right method for me must be acquired by receiving 
suggestions for myself and by experimenting with 
them. 



TEE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 89 

Above all, it is a matter of ethical importance, 
that the teacher should retain confidence in the 
early and persistent appeal to the higher motives, 
such as fidelity, obedience, regard for an honorable 
ambition, affection, and the sense of duty. 



LECTURE V 

THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER: 
AS TRAINING FACULTY 

In the last lecture it was made clear that both the 
imparting and the acquiring of knowledge involve 
the active cooperation of all the mental faculties. 
But the activity of these so-called faculties, if 
rightly directed and employed, can not fail to result 
in their training. The development of knowledge, 
then, is possible only through the development of 
all the mental activities. To speak of the teacher's 
function, asi training faculty, in a manner to sug- 
gest that the theme is separable from the thought 
of teaching as essentially the imparting of knowl- 
edge, may seem superflous, if not illogical. And, 
indeed, I have no intention of implying that the 
growth of knowledge, in ourselves or in others, 
can be secured without the training of faculty ; or 
that these two functions of the teacher are sepa- 
rable either in theory or in practise. On the other 
hand, however, the two are not precisely the same ; 
or, at any rate, they do not represent precisely the 
same aspects of the complex work of education. 
There are teachers, and there are pupils, who seem 
to be further advanced in knowledge than they are 

90 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 91 

in what we call ' ' capacity. ' ^ And we can not very 
well help recognizing the commonplace, that the 
faculties involved in teaching and learning— such 
as memory, intellect, imagination, etc.— are by no 
means always developed in the same proportion. 

In the next lecture I am going to consider the 
function of the teacher, as the formation of char- 
acter. This function, of course, includes all the 
others ; for the formation of character is inseparable 
from the arousing of interest in worthy pursuits, 
the training of attention and of all the mental 
activities for which attention is the pre-condition, 
and the resulting growth of knowledge. While, 
then, all these so-called ''functions" of the profes- 
sional teacher are so interdependent that they can 
not be considered or practised apart, they arrange 
themselves quite naturally in the order which I 
have given to them; in this order the training of 
faculty stands midway between the imparting of 
knowledge and the forming of character. 

I will speak, first, of the work of the teacher in 
training the senses. And here we must follow our 
customary plan of seeking in the psychology of 
the subject for some ground on which to place the 
rules that are to serve for our practical guidance 
in the discharge of our function as teachers. Max- 
ims designed for the control of conduct ought 
always, so far as possible, to have a basis of science. 
There are certain facts and laws of the life of sen- 



92 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

sation, with which every teacher ought to be 
acquainted. 

The fundamental fact about this side of our life 
and its development is, that sensations are conscious 
processes, primarily dependent upon external stim- 
uli. Both of the facts whose statement is combined 
in this one statement of the fundamental fact, are 
equally important. But one of them is quite too 
often either overlooked, or supprest, or even 
thoroughly perverted. All sensations are conscious 
processes. To speak as tho sensations could be 
conveyed along the nervous tracts, or produced by, 
or located in, the substance of the brain, is to mis- 
use a figure of speech which is as truly inappro- 
priate to express the fundamental facts as it was 
when the ancient forms of a superstitious nature- 
worship identified the active forces of the flowing 
water or the growing tree with the fairy or other 
spirit that inhabited them. Sensory processes take 
place in the nervous organism; they can be excited 
in outward parts of that organism; they can be 
traced toward or away from the nervous centers; 
they are continued in a modified form within those 
centers, and are moved from place to place within 
the centers ; and we know something, but not nearly 
so much as we could wish, about the chemical and 
physical nature and laws of the nervous processes. 
But when you come to talk of the sensations them- 
selves, you are dealing with mental experiences; 



TEE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 93 

and all chemical and physical descriptions are 
utterly inappropriate, unless understood in a modi- 
fied and largely figurative way. "What we teachers 
want to do is to arouse and control and make more 
truthful and more accurate, the sensations them- 
selves, as primitive processes of the mental life, 
and as the indispensable conditions of a rich and 
large development of that life. 

I have insisted upon this fact— that sensations are 
processes of the mind, or if you will, of the spirit— 
in order to enhance our estimate of the value and 
dignity of the life of sensation, and of the necessity 
of training the senses, if we would increase knowl- 
edge and develop character. I wish to warn you 
against much of modem physiology, which is using 
language and putting forth theories that inevitably 
have the same practical effects which followed from 
the extremes of old-time religious doctrine. To 
identify the life of sensation with the sensuous, or 
with the merely mechanical, prevents us from lay- 
ing a good foundation for the teacher's work in 
training the senses, as a matter of high import 
and even of solemn duty. 

But how shall the teacher approach the secret 
mental happenings, in order to subject them to 
direction and suitable discipline ? This question, of 
course, turns our attention at once to the other 
aspect of the twofold fundamental fact. Sensa- 
tions are primarily dependent on external stim- 



94 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

uli. This dependence of the conscious processes 
upon external stimuli gives the teacher a certain 
limited control over the processes themselves. 
Indeed, when we think of the matter in a broad 
way W6 see that, barring out as doubtful all tele- 
pathic and so-called spiritualistic means of influ- 
ence, it is only through the senses that 
we can know the world of things and men, or take 
any part whatever in the world 's social intercourse. 
Sensations, considered as mental processes, differ 
in so-called quantity, and in quality or kind, in 
the manner of their combination, and in the feel- 
ings and intellectual processes which accompany 
them. The function of education is to control and 
train them in all these varied respects. In our 
present system of public education, the means defi- 
nitely provided, and intelligently employed for the 
training of the senses seem to be better developed 
at both ends of the educative process than in the 
middle. The kindergarten makes a great use of 
natural objects, and of models and other similar 
material, in order to present the object as it really 
is, to the senses, and to train the senses in observing 
and comprehending different classes of objects. In 
college and university, and to a considerable extent 
in the best equipped high-schools, the plentiful use 
of blackboard and of apparatus and of prepared 
objects, gives recognition to the value of this side 
of education. But when in Switzerland, for exam- 



TEB FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 95 

pie, one frequently comes across bands of public 
school children, transported at the public expense 
and conducted by their teachers, engaged in the 
study of the topography, the physical geography, 
the flora and fauna, and the history, of large sec- 
tions of their native land, one learns from observa- 
tion how much behind some of the other nations the 
United States still is, in certain important fea- 
tures of the system of public education. 

One interesting conclusion follows from this 
view of the nature of the life of sensation and of 
the conditions ctf its successful development. The 
development of the senses is in every case an indi- 
vidual affair. To state the same truth from the 
reverse point of view: The development of any 
individual's life of sense experience— its wealth, its 
refinement, its practical usefulness — can not be 
considered as a fixed and unalterable endowment. 
It is rather, something constantly open to influ- 
ences; something that admits of constant improve- 
ment, and stands in need of constant training. The 
peculiar species of personal intercourse in which 
the work of the teacher consists, enables him to 
become the creator and the cultivator of a world 
of sense experience that, but for his influence, 
would never exist. It is true that different persons 
are bom with such different characteristics of the 
nervous mechanism concerned in sensation that they 
can never all attain the same degree of sensitiveness 



96 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOBOPHT 

or of accuracy to their responses to external stimuli. 
In a word, all can have by no means the same 
native educability of the life of sensation. More- 
over, there are many deficiences of the sensory 
organs, both external and central, which hamper 
or prevent the development of some one or more 
of the special senses of certain individuals. In 
many such cases, the help of the surgeon or the 
physician can be called in, and great or total relief 
obtained. For example, there are the preventive 
measures which may be employed at the birth of 
the child to diminish the distressing amount of 
opthalmia. There are those well-known surgical 
operations for the cure of certain mal-adjustments 
of the eye, which either prevent the child from 
being taught with any satisfactory result, or which 
greatly diminish or obscure the success of the 
most conscientious teacher. But over and beyond 
all such considerations lies the one encouraging fact 
that, in every not wholly hopeless case— and few 
cases are wholly hopeless— the teacher has it to say, 
more than anyone else, whether that particular 
child shall develop or not, the power of an accurate, 
comprehensive, varied, and pleasure-giving use of 
the senses, in the domains of science, art, and the 
life of social intercourse. For, I repeat, such a 
use of the senses can be gained only through the 
process of education. All eyes do not see the same 
things; nor all ears hear the same things. The 



TEE FUNCTION OP THE TEACHER 97 

oculist, in case of one kind of deficiency, may be 
of help ; the anrist, in the other kind of deficiency. 
But the teacher can help in all cases. It is scarcely 
too much to say that education creates for the indi- 
vidual a real and beautiful world of sensory 
objects; and that, without education, somehow 
obtained, no such world can come into existence 
for any individual mind. 

The more profound truth of this statement ap- 
pears when we consider the relation of the educa- 
tion of the senses to the development of the other 
faculties. The excitement, variety, and method in 
combination of the senses, determine in an impor- 
tant way the growth of the intelligence. In saying 
this, we recur again to the truth which was so much 
emphasized when speaking of the essential nature 
of knowledge, and of the laws which regulate its 
development. Knowing things through the senses 
is never a mere process of absorbing impressions 
borne into the mind from without, as it were; 
knowing things is, the rather, discriminating them 
through the senses by an active intellect. Thus the 
trained use of the senses in observing sensible 
objects is, essentially considered, an exercise of the 
intellect, a training of intelligence. Nor does the 
result of such exercise stop with an acquaintance 
merely with a large number of individual objects, 
which are known by being seen, heard, and handled, 
as the they were separate objects and bore no 



98 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

systematic and vital relation to each other. An 
intelligent and appreciative use of the senses upon 
natural objects is impossible for any length of time, 
without its begetting a growth in the knowledge of, 
and the sympathy with, Nature as a great and 
beautiful system of things. This bewildering mul- 
titude of things, the mind learns to grasp as an 
orderly Whole; and thus to learn the meaning of 
such words as '* Universe'' and ''Cosmos"— Uni- 
verse, as revealing to the cultured intellect, through 
the trained senses, a wonderful unity underlying 
its seeming diversity, and cosmos, as opposed to 
chaos, and perfect in arrangement. And when this 
conception of the totality of visible, audible, and 
tangible things, is reached, the higher sentiments 
are awakened and cultivated. All life is made to 
appear nobler and richer, and especially all human 
life; because the human being who is educated in 
this way, can look upon himself and upon his fel- 
lows, as the especially favored children of so beau- 
tiful and bounteous— albeit so stern, a mother. 

In this way, the cultivation of the life of sen- 
sation, through the intelligent and skilful ministra- 
tions of the teacher, in the peculiar form of inter- 
course which is open between him and his pupil, 
may have a most uplifting and broadening effect 
upon the character of both. This effect it may 
have ; this effect it ought to have. I am perfectly 
well aware that the teaching of the so-called natural 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 99 

sciences in the public schools and higher institu- 
tions of learning, in this country at the present 
time, largely, perhaps more generally, fails of hav- 
ing this, its legitimate effect upon the character of 
the pupil. But the failure is chiefly the fault of 
the teachers themselves. For my part, I am willing 
to go much farther than I have already gone. The 
teaching of these sciences ought to be so conducted 
as to heighten and greaten the moral and religious 
ideals, and to improve the moral and religious life. 
But, alas ! so many of the teachers of these sciences 
either do not believe that this world is God's world, 
or else are afraid to convey to others the slightest 
hint of cherishing such a belief, that the moral and 
religious factors in the development of character 
often suffer rather than gain by this kind of 
training of the senses, and of the intelligence 
through the senses. I have in mind one of our 
most prominent universities, which in the adminis- 
tration of a large trust fund that was given for 
the express purpose of founding a lectureship to 
show how the natural sciences testify to the truth, 
that this world is indeed God's world, has spent 
much money to employ distinguished '* scientists" 
from this country and over seas; but not a single 
word has been said in any of the courses of lec- 
tures thus obtained, which was even suggestive of 
this important truth. 

So important do I regard this particular part of 



100 TEE TEACEmmS PRAOTICAL PHILOSOPEY 

the teacher ^s function as a trainer of faculty that I 
wish, before leaving the subject, to pass briefly in 
review the lessons for the teacher which I have 
already tried to establish upon a sound psycholog- 
ical basis. In what is called perception (or to bor- 
row from the Germans a word which has become 
pretty thoroughly domesticated among certain writ- 
ers on pedagogy — ' 'Apperception' 0, the active use 
of the intellect, with selective attention and trained 
self-control, is necessarily involved. To perceive 
things— in an exact, clear, comprehensive way, 
their association in classes, and the laws of their 
interaction — this is at least one entire half of the 
mind's work, whether the use of the mind be mainly 
directed toward the attainment of science or toward 
the immediate conduct of the practical life. In the 
intelligent and skilful exercise of his function as 
training the senses, the teacher may fit the mind of 
the pupil to do this work well. The knowledge and 
mastery of natural forces, the knowledge of how 
to use things, the intelligent grasp on the concep- 
tion of Nature as an orderly and beautiful whole, 
and some of the finest and most ennobling elements 
of the moral and the religious life, can be gained 
only in this way. Such education lays the founda- 
tions of science and of art ; and it leads up to the 
reflective acquaintance with those truths that con- 
cern themselves about the interpretation of Nature, 
and the more ultimate signiflcance of her mysterious 



TEE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 101 

ways. The avenue to seeing otherwise invisible 
things may be opened for the mind of the pupil 
by the teacher 's hand in the training of the pupil 's 
eyes to see what really surrounds him on every 
side. And to show the opening mind, how this 
world is God's world, and how God has through 
countless ages been making, and is still making this, 
his world, is well worth learning how to do. 

There follows upon this, in the psychological 
order of the teacher's function as the appointed 
trainer of faculty, the training of Memory and 
Imagination. It is necessary, then, at this point 
to consider certain facts and laws that have to do 
with the nature and the development of these 
faculties. And, first of all we notice as something 
quite fundamental, that the process common to 
both these forms of the *^ reproductive faculty" is 
the arising in consciousness of a so-called '* mental 
image." *' Bringing back," as we say — quite fig- 
uratively — the image, or the idea, of some past 
experience is the primary form of activity, on the 
exercise of which depends the continuity of the 
mental life. The nature of this mental image, 
which seems to be what it really is not, 
and the whole value of which consists in its 
being so like some other experience as to be able 
to represent it faithfully, and yet so unlike that 
same experience as to make us able to distinguish 
it as not identical with that experience, gives some 



102 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

of its most subtle and interesting problems to the 
study of psychology. Into the psychological doc- 
trine of the mental image we cannot, of course, 
enter with any fulness of detail. It is enough for 
our present purposes to emphasize these two truths, 
upon which the teacher's relation to the training 
of reproductive faculty chiefly depends. First: 
The teacher can emphasize and direct those proc- 
esses of observation in which clear, exact, and serv- 
iceable mental images have their origin. And sec- 
ond: he can do much to determine those habitual 
modes of association on which the recall of the men- 
tal image depends. The formation of those memory 
images which shall truthfully represent to us our 
past experiences with things, with ourselves, and 
with other persons, depends chiefly upon the char- 
acter of the observation given to the original experi- 
ence. We can not clearly, correctly, and compre- 
hensively, recall the visual images of things which 
we have not seen with an act of clear, accurate, 
and comprehensive perception. It is true, indeed, 
that some things and some events stamp their 
images upon our memory with an instantaneousnesa 
that seems to allow no time for either thought or 
deliberate attention, and with a vividness that 
defies our attempts to forget them or greatly to 
control their powerful influence. But liiis fact does 
not controvert or destroy the evidence from another 
class of facts. If you want to remember anything 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 103 

well, you must commit it to memory well. The 
teacher, in a way, presides over the pupil, directing 
and enforcing, what and how he shall commit to 
memory. He can not get hold of the mechanism in 
the successful working of which a true and lasting 
and serviceable commitment to memory consists. His 
work is more subtle and less immediate here than in 
the training of the senses. He can say, *'Look at 
this''; ''Listen to that"; *'Feel of this"; ''Study 
that"; but when he says, "Commit to memory 
this or that, " he is giving a command which can be 
realized in no simple and direct way. 

We all know— and sometimes our knowledge on 
this point is gained by very awkward and embar- 
rassing experiences— that committing things well 
to memory does not by any means always secure 
their prompt and appropriate recall. "We remem- 
ber things when we neither need nor want to 
remember them ; and often, when we most need and 
want to remember those same things, we can not 
recall them at all. Nothing that the teacher can 
do for himself or for his pupils can wholly cure 
this strange freakishness of the power of recall 
over what has been well committed to memory. 
And yet, here again, the teacher can do something 
toward cultivating in the pupil such habits of 
association as are the best safeguards against the 
vagaries and stoppages in the power of prompt, 
timely, and serviceable recollection. 



104 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

When we remember the general principle of the 
functional unity of the mind, and the interdepend- 
ence of all its so-called faculties, we may take a 
larger view of the teacher's function in the train- 
ing of memory and imagination. Then, on the one 
hand, it appears to be our work to develop the 
power of mental imagery in such a manner as to 
secure a prompt and accurate memory, and a lively 
and productive imagination without sacrificing 
trueness and breadth of judgment; and, on the 
other hand, to develop judgment, in respect of 
accuracy and breadth, in a manner not to cramp 
unduly the artistic impulses and creative activity 
of the imagination. 

Probably no other matter within the general field 
of pedagogy has been more thoroughly worked over 
in the search for helpful practical suggestions to 
the teacher, than the training of the memory. This 
is partly due to its importance, and partly to the 
comparative ease with which a sort of experimental 
and statistical investigation into the facts and 
laws of memory can be carried on. I shall make 
no attempt to review the subject with any detail. 
In my various works on psychology I have shown 
that the laws of the process called ''The Association 
of Ideas'' may be summed up under the principle 
of contiguity in the unity of consciousness. This 
principle implies in a general way that impressions 
are recalled together, which have originally been 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 105 

made together, but in dependence upon the inten- 
sity, frequency, nearness in time, emotional accom- 
paniment, and constitutional or acquired tend- 
encies of the individual mind. So nearly universal 
and so influential in the entire process of education 
are these laws of the association of ideas, that it 
becomes a dutiful part of the teacher ^s professional 
equipment to form some intimate acquaintance with 
them. As bearing on the teacher's conduct of the 
work of the classroom, I make the following sug- 
gestions. 

In the attempt to educate the spontaneous mem- 
mory there are three important cautions which it is 
well to bear constantly in mind. One of these cau- 
tions warns us against overtaxing the memory. 
There are natural limitations to this faculty. All 
children can not be taught to remember equally 
many things, or to remember anything equally 
quickly or well To avoid overtaxing, the various 
expedients of frequent repetition without prolonged 
strain, simplicity of the object combined with 
variety to the points of view from which the same 
object is presented, multiplication of references, 
so as to tie it up with many associations, etc., etc., 
may be employed. But not even in this way shall 
we succeed in greatly altering the important nat- 
ural differences of capacity. 

Care should be taken, on the other hand, not to 
tie up the ideas, so to say, with incongruous asso- 



106 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

ciations so that they can not afterward be set free 
for their higher and more logical uses. In this way 
we may get our pupils into the condition of the 
scholar who could never recall the things he had 
learned while apprentice to a hatter, without the 
smell of glue being associated with the process of 
recall; or the learned rabbi who, whenever he 
recalled certain passages from the Talmud, saw 
passing before the mind's eye the images of the 
fences by which he had been running when, in his 
youth, he committed them to memory. There is 
danger of this sort in all the much advertised arti- 
ficial schemes for cultivating memory. And there 
is, also, as we all know, the danger of overloading 
the spontaneous memory. The difficulty and embar- 
rassment of remembering too much of petty and 
disagreeable and useless details, that would bet- 
ter be forgotten, are often as great as the difficulty 
and embarrassment of forgetfulness. It is said of 
the great philosopher Kant, that after parting with 
an old servant who had at last become intolerable, 
he recorded in his dairy this significant exhorta- 
tion: ** Remember to forget Lampe.'* 

But the teacher's function in training the faculty 
of ready and accurate recall should be subordinated 
to his service in training the higher faculty of 
reeognitive memory, or memory as a form of knowl- 
edge. Such training involves the awakening and 
cultivation of judgment and the creative imagina- 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACJSER 107 

tion. The cultivation of a sound and accurate 
memory is also related to the arousing and develop- 
ment of conscience, or moral consciousness. We 
have lately been made very familiar with the mem- 
ory of the rascal on the witness-stand, who has 
forgotten everything which he does not wish to 
remember; and who remembers in a partial and 
crooked way, everything which he does wish to 
remember. It is the testimony of our lawyers and 
judges all over the land, that perjury is the most 
frequent of crimes; and that it generally goes, not 
unrecognized, but unpunished. Parents and teach- 
ers, who are observing and conscientious, know 
perfectly well that the amount of falsehood through 
haste and inattention, as well as of deliberate lying, 
amongst the children and youth of the land, at 
home and in school, is something positively shock- 
ing. Now the foundations for something better 
than this can be laid in the schoolroom; altho I 
grant that the task is difficult, and sometimes seems 
discouraging. The laying of these foundations con- 
sists in part, but not wholly, in the cultivation of 
a conscientious use of the faculty of memory. And 
from the very nature of the case, training in the 
intelligent and accurate use of language is an indis- 
pensable accompaniment of training to a sound and 
accurate memory. To make one^s self and one's 
pupils careful to remember correctly and to state 
truly; what is actually remembered, without an 



108 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

undesirable repression of imagination and of free- 
dom in speech, is a delicate task. But it is well 
worth, all that it costs, not only for its prospec- 
tive influence on science, but also and chiefly for 
its immediate and sure and continuous influence on 
the moral character of the individual, and on the 
welfare of a social condition which is just now 
suffering more from the habit of lying than from 
almost any other one cause. 

The work of the teacher, especially in all the 
earlier stages of the educative process, has so little 
to do with what is sometimes called *' abstract" or 
**pure" thinking, and so much has already been 
said as to the development of this faculty in con- 
nection with all the more concrete and definite 
methods of education dependent upon the nature 
of knowledge, and of the special form of the teach- 
er's personal intercourse with the pupil, that the 
training of the intellect would seem to require in 
this connection only a very brief treatment. Intel- 
lect is trained, whenever the senses are trained, 
whenever spontaneous or recognitive memory is 
trained, whenever knowledge is imparted or ac- 
quired; indeed, whenever the feeling of interest in 
any object is awakened, and the selective attention 
directed toward that object. A few suggestions, 
however, of a more particular sort, with reference 
to the teacher's function as a trainer of the intel- 
lect, will fitly close this lecture. 



THE FUNCTIOHf OF THE TEACHER 109 

The one fundamental form of the mind's activity 
which enters into and shapes all intellectual life — 
that which may be called primary intellection— is 
active, discriminating consciousness. Training to 
discriminate, then, is the essential beginning proc- 
ess of all human intelligence. This process implies 
the recognition of similarities and of differences; 
it lays the basis for the more elaborate work of the 
mind in the simpler forms of analysis, synthesis, 
generalization; and later, in the formation of con- 
ceptions, and the discovery of so-called laws. The 
teacher 's means of control over this activity in dis- 
crimination has been already seen to consist largely 
in the excitement of interest, the direction of atten- 
tion, and the experience of the pleasures and pains 
that follow success or failure in the work of dis- 
crimination. 

In this connection we are also to notice that the 
growth of intellect is preeminently the growth of 
mind — in the more precise meaning of the latter 
word. Therefore, in stadying the development of 
the intellectual faculties of the child, we can not 
emphasize too much the dependence of intellectual 
growth upon the training of all the mental faculties. 
But the essential form of mental functioning 
through which the growth of intellect and the 
development of science comes about may be said to 
consist in the thinking that results in forming judg- 
ments based on evidence. And thus, the knowing 



110 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

how we know, is the form of knowing which comes 
latest, but is the crowning result of a good educa- 
tion, on its more purely intellectual side. 

This last remark leads me naturally to speak 
of those stages in intellectual development which 
enable us in our training of the mind to follow the 
laws of its natural development. Roughly speak- 
ing, these stages may be divided into the following 
three. The earliest intellectual training is acquired 
by the child in connection with the gaining of a 
knowledge of its bodily organs and their control, 
in the adjustment of the child ^s body to other 
external bodies; and, as well, of the more obvious 
properties and relations of these bodies themselves. 

The second stage in intellectual training involves 
the inore voluntary exercises of discrimination in 
the formation of judgments and habits of conduct, 
with reference to the less obvious and fundamental 
qualities and relations of objects— on the basis, 
chiefly, of concrete examples. The third stage in 
the training of the intellect is chiefly characterized 
by the formation of conceptual judgments— partly 
on the basis of the individual's own observation, 
but chiefly as they have become incorporated in 
the experience of the race. 

We might speak of a fourth stage, but this can 
be reached only as the intellect is trained to inquire 
carefully into the reasons for these transmitted 
judgments; and so becomes self -trained to form 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 111 

judgments of its own, on the basis of prolonged 
examination into all the facts, and of careful and 
logical reasoning. But few, indeed, make any great 
advances into this stage of the development of in- 
tellectual faculty; and, perhaps, it is well for the 
solidarity in action of society and of the state, that 
the case is so. 



LECTURE VI 

THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER: 
AS FORMING CHARACTER 

The work of education, whether we view it from 
the point of standing which estimates its value for 
the individual, or from that which surveys its 
broader relations to society and to the state, cul- 
minates in the production of character. But this 
word *' character" is fitted to cover a conception 
of very comprehensive and somewhat shifty nature. 
Character can not be built without using all the 
materials which enter into the constitution of per- 
sonal life. To assist in its building is the highest 
and most comprehensive and difficult, but valuable 
kind of personal intercourse. In treating of the 
teacher's function in the formation of the pupil's 
character, I must, therefore, assume your consent, 
in principle, at least, to much which has been said 
in all the previous lectures. It has been shown 
how impossible it is to separate between the work 
of training the mental faculties and the imparting 
of knowledge ; and that the imparting of knowledge 
can not take place without exciting interest, guiding 
attention, and thus arousing and directing the 
mind's own activities. In the same manner, the 

112 



TEE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 113 

mental faculties can not be trained without the 
results showing themselves in the formation of 
character; and, conversely, character can not be 
formed except in dependence upon trained 
faculties. 

Let it be understood, then, that there is no break 
or gap between this lecture and the last lecture. We 
shall simply continue the subject of the teacher's 
work as a trainer of mental life, and carry it up 
into those more complex and practically effective 
forms of activity, which are sometimes called *'the 
higher faculties.'* For the teacher should aim to 
reach and develop the higher forms of imagination 
and feeling, and the so-called Will. In speaking of 
the more primitive forms of mental imagery, I once 
or twice used the word *' impression. " This word 
emphasizes the passive side or aspect of the repro- 
ductive faculty. Something happens in the out- 
side world, or there is some experience of pain or 
pleasure arising from w: " ' , which is so intense 
in itself, or which awakens so much of interest and 
attention that it gets stamped upon the mind. We 
seem to be like clay, or putty, under such forceful 
stimuli of the sensations and of the feelings of 
pleasure and pain. But if all the effects of our 
past experiences were by way of being impressed, 
were of this almost purely passive sort, we could 
never rise above fhe lower animals in knowledge. 



114 THE TEACHER'S PRAOTIOAL PHILOSOPHY, 

we could never attain anj^ trace of a truly human 
character. 

The first process in the cultivation of the imagi- 
nation implies what has sometimes been aptly called 
**the freeing of the ideas'* from their more primi- 
tive and lower forms of association. I have already 
pointed out the fact that these associations are gen- 
erally trivial or merely conventional, as it were — 
giving us little or no insight into the real nature 
and more important relations of things; and that 
they are not infrequently false and prejudicial to 
genuine mental development. We do not wish to 
continue to remember or to imagine things pre- 
cisely as we at first learned them. The freeing 
of the concrete ideas from their first associations 
results in the production of those more general 
ideas, or conceptions, that answer to the important 
aspects and relations of things, and to the principles 
of right living. It is the business and the privilege 
of the teacher to assist in this process of the eman- 
cipation of the ideas. 

Few subjects in psychology have been more hotly 
debated than the nature of the so-called conception, 
as a veritable product of conscious mind. The 
debate has been, and altho it has lost much of its 
old vagueness, still is, carried over into philosophy 
in a manner to result in some of the principal 
divisions into schools of philosophy. I can not 
enter into the discussion of the nature of the men- 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 115 

tal image, when it becomes so freed from concrete 
associations of a particular kind as to entitle it to 
be called a conception. It is pretty clear to me, 
however, that it never is what it is assimied to be 
by treatises on ' ' pure logic ' ' ; but that, on the other 
hand, those who deny the capacity of the concept to 
deal successfully with the most general laws and 
relations, and with the loftiest ideals of humanity, 
are almost equally in the wrong. But, how depend- 
ent this faculty of the imagination is on education, 
and how it varies in different individuals in depend- 
ence upon the character and degree of their edu- 
cation, I had a rather startling bit of evidence, in 
the following way. When lecturing on the subject 
before an audience of such wide range that it 
included one of the most celebrated astronomers in 
the world and a number of young and ** unsophis- 
ticated" girls, I undertook to test the matter by 
springing on them a certain word, and asking them 
to note carefully what ideas it aroused in their 
minds. The word was *'Lion." The astromomer 
said that at once he had a perfectly clear mental 
picture of the constellation Leo; while one of the 
younger girls could report no idea whatever, but 
only an irresistible tendency to shudder. 

Fortunately, it is not necessary that we should 
take sides with either the Idealists, or the Nomi- 
nalists, or the Conceptualists, in order to discharge 
well our function as trainers of the higher forms of 



116 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

imagination. Bnt it is desirable that we should 
have some adequate knowledge of the importance to 
the pupil of this side of our professional work. In 
its interest, therefore, I call your attention to these 
values of the creative imagination. The trained 
use of the creative imagination is necessary for 
attaining a knowledge of the principles of the posi- 
tive sciences. These all demand the strenuous use 
of this faculty for their appreciation and their com- 
prehension. This is, of course, most eminently and 
obviously true only of the supreme generalizations 
of the positive sciences. For example, I have no 
hesitation in saying that the modern scientific con- 
ception of matter makes more severe demands on 
the imagination than were ever made by any sys- 
tem of theology in its attempt to form a tenable 
conception of the Divine Being, to whom religion 
looks, through figures of speech, as the Creator and 
Preserver of the world. Or consider, again, the 
enormous demands made upon the imagination in 
the effort to frame some adequate picture of the 
immense stretches of time and the enormous com- 
plexity of changes demanded by the reigning theory 
of biological evolution. Or, once more, how weary 
is the trained faculty, of the non-expert at least, 
after listening for a single hour to the attempt to 
set forth, even with the most liberal and skilful use 
of the blackboard and all other available means of 
illustration, the modern ideas of the constitution of 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 117 

matter. But it is not in these high things simply, to 
which few of us, and still fewer of our pupils, may 
ever hope to attain, that some knowledge of the 
physical and chemical sciences demands a trained 
imagination. The extensive, but still too limited, 
use of apparatus in the modern schoolroom bears 
witness to the same increasing demand. The child 
who has no sufficient training of this faculty can 
never learn what the world about him, as known by 
science, really is. 

The trained imagination is also necessary for the 
appreciation and the productivity of the arts. This 
truth is so obvious and so universally recognized, 
that it may be passed by with a simple reference. 
It recommends and warrants the effort, which is 
being so worthily made, to provide for the modem 
schoolroom material for the cultivation of the 
artistic imagination, and to exercise the children 
and youth of the land in the attempt to produce 
with their own hands some of the simpler artistic 
forms. It has been said by way of contrasting our 
own country with the one that is, perhaps, most 
thoroughly trained of all modern nations in this 
use of the imagination, that when an eagle appears 
in the neighborhood, every American boy runs for 
a gun; while, under similar stimulus in Japan, 
every boy runs for a pen or a brush. Perhaps we 
shall in time become cultured enough to take delight 



118 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

in studying and picturing while alive, rather than 
in unnecessarily killing, the lower animals. 

But, there is yet higher and practically more 
important use of the creative imagination than any 
which has been noticed hitherto. For the trained 
use of this faculty is especially demanded for con- 
structing the moral and religious ideals. It is these 
ideals of conduct and of the Being of the World, 
which most powerfully affect the development of 
the individual and of society. Indeed, we may 
say that, according to the nature, comprehensive- 
ness, and living energy of these idealsj the direc- 
tion and rapidity of moral and religious develop- 
ment are characterized. 

It has become painfully and dangerously prevar 
lent, of late, to exalt the so-called practical, and to 
decry and scorn the holding and the pursuit of 
ideals. But, there can be no practise of the human 
sort, without the powerful influence of these ideals ; 
and there can be no intelligent cultivation of either 
morals or religious faith, without the constant 
improvement and prevalence of these ideals. Sci- 
ence, art, morality and religion, all alike demand 
for their well-being the services of the professional 
teacher in the training of the higher uses of the 
imagination. 

We see, now, that the imagination, through its 
activity in framing ideals and exciting the appro- 
priate feelings and forms of eohduet, profoundly 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 119 

influences the formation of character. But how 
shall the teacher, when once convinced of this 
truth, attack this important function? How can 
the imagination of the pupil, in its higher uses, be 
brought under educative influences by the teacher 1 
Successful practise answers this question by calling 
attention to these four principal ways. First : The 
teacher can, within certain somewhat movable 
limits, prepare the environment which surrounds 
the pupils under his charge. There are few mate- 
rial conditions so barren and squalid that some- 
thing stimulating to this faculty cannot be intro- 
duced into them. And there is always, except in 
the most crowded districts of our cities, something 
of natural beauty in the neighborhood of the school- 
room. This silent but constant influence of the 
environment upon the imagination is quite too often 
underestimated or even totally overlooked. 

Second: The teacher's own example is not the 
least inspiring of the influences at his command for 
the formation of character through the training of 
the imagination. If I am not going to be misunder- 
stood, I will say unqualifiedly, that no person is fit 
to be a teacher of the young who is not an idealist, 
and who is not constantly striving to shape his own 
conduct and character better, after the pattern of 
consciously cherished ideals. 

Third : The stimulus which the teacher provides 
by calling attention to, and dwelling upon, the best 



120 THE TEACBEB'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

examples, in nature, history, art, and in society, 
may be a most effective means for training the 
imagination so as to secure the result of an ennobled 
character. In Japan, I found everywhere the most 
diligent pains taken to keep before the minds of the 
young the patterns of what was best and most 
worthy of imitation in the national life of the 
country's past and of its present. 

And, finally, in the later stages of education, the 
professional teacher can do much toward imbuing 
the pupil's mind with the knowledge of principles. 
And principles, whether of science, or art, or con- 
duct, are most apt to be conveyed from one mind to 
another, when they are vivified with a warm imagi- 
nation, and proclaimed with a reasonable enthu- 
siasm. 

But there is another side of our common human 
nature, on the culture of which the formation of 
character is chiefly dependent. This is the side of 
the emotions and sentiments, the lower and the 
higher forms of feeling. It is, therefore, an impor- 
tant part of the teacher's function in the forming 
of character, to assist the pupil in getting his appe- 
tites, passions, and affections, under control; and 
in inspiring and refining the sentiments which 
accompany and strengthen the sense of duty, the 
love of beauty, and the desires and efforts for the 
social welfare. If it is true of every man on the 
intellectual side, that *'as he thinks, so is he"; it is 



THE FUNCTION OF i'HE TEACHER 121 

equally true on the social side that as a man feels, 
so is he. In the shaping of conduct and the form- 
ing of character, both sides must be symetrically 
developed in order to make the perfect man. 

A few words regarding the psychological nature 
of feeling in general will, I think, make more intel- 
ligible what will be said afterward by way of 
practical suggestions for the successful discharge 
of this particular function of the teacher. What 
we call our *' feelings/' in distinction from our 
knowledge or our thoughts, emphasizes the more 
individual and subjective side of mental life. The 
very nature of feeling consists in its being felt. 
Hence, our feelings are, in a much higher degree 
than our thoughts incommunicable in their nature. 
iThey are our very own. If in our natural yearning 
for sympathy, we try to tell others what our sor- 
rows, joys, fears, hopes, aspirations and motives 
really are, we know that the language of concep- 
tion and reasoning is entirely ineffectual, unless it 
can arouse similar feelings in the listener's soul. 
It is impossible, therefore, to train the emotions and 
sentiments by the methods that apply in mathe- 
matical demonstration, or physical experimenta- 
tion, or the teaching of the languages and history 
by a course of lecturing or of reading in text-books. 

Another characteristic of the life of feeling is 
its indescribably variable nature. It is peculiarly 
difficult for the so-called science of psychology to 



122 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

classify, as well as to describe accurately, the dif- 
ferent kinds of emotions and sentiments. In spite 
of this indefinite variability, however, all forms of 
feeling have certain common characteristics. They 
all, whenever they become intense, tend to master 
the will and render the individual subject to their 
control. This trait is emphasized in the very words 
by which we designate them. They are ** passions,'' 
** affections," '* disorders '' ; they will subdue or en- 
slave us, if we do not subdue them. All this sug- 
gests that the trainer must know how to get them 
under the control of reason and good will. 

Still another characteristic of the life of feeling is 
the great interest which it has for the individual. 
Almost, if not quite, all the feelings have a tinge, 
if not a strong infusion, of pleasure or of pain. 
Without entering upon the somewhat shallow 
debate of psychologists as to whether our pleasure- 
pains are properly to be called feelings or *' tones of 
feeling," or whether they are not the only experi- 
ences which should go by the name feeling at all, 
we know that a considerable portion of our emo- 
tions and sentiments are, in fact, either painful or 
pleasurable enough to be of great interest to our- 
selves and to our social environment. This fact 
brings the culture of the feelings into the closest 
relation with the teacher's work of arousing inter- 
est, drawing attention to certain rather than other 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 123 

subjects, and so imparting knowledge and training 
the mental faculties. 

What further I have to say respecting the oppor- 
tunities afforded for the culture of the life of feel- 
ing by that peculiar kind of personal intercourse 
in which the work of education consists, will be 
facilitated, if I at once divide the subject into two 
parts. Roughly speaking, we may distinguish the 
emotions and the sentiments as two kinds of feeling 
which require different, and sometimes even 
opposed, treatment at the teacher's hands. The 
division is by no means scientifically exact; and 
if I were lecturing on the psychology of feeling, I 
should think it necessary to explain the matter at 
length. But for our practical purposes as suggest- 
ing rules of conduct, the division is convenient. 

By the "emotions" we understand those experi- 
ences of feeling which are of such character, and so 
strong, that they seem to impel the individual to 
some kind of immediate action. Emotions are 
states of consciousness which move us toward some 
sort of impulsive conduct. Their effect upon the 
bodily organs of movement is often so prompt and 
powerful that the felt condition of these organs 
becomes an important part of the emotion itself. 
The extreme view, that the whole of the emotion 
consists in this feeling of the condition of the motor 
organism— or, to put the case in a taking but rather 
facetious way— that we do not clinch our fists and 



124 THE TEACHER'8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

grit our teeth because we are angry, but that we 
are angry, because we have already clinched our 
fists and gritted our teeth— this extreme view, I 
say, need not be discust. It has been thoroughly 
discredited both experimentally and by the direct 
testimony of consciousness. But in all cases of 
strong emotion there are certain physical sensations 
mingled in, which are due to the excitement of the 
bodily organs by the feeling. This more definite 
sensation-element I have, in my various works on 
psychology, spoken of as the "somatic resonance.'' 
A certain confusion and hurrying of the trains of 
associated ideas, a feeling of bewilderment which 
we tend to locate somewhere inside the head, is also 
a characteristic effect of the rising beyond control 
of any strong emotional excitement. This state of 
confusion is often still farther complicated and 
intensified by what we call ' ' a conflict of emotions. ' ' 
Different kinds of feeling, of differing strengths— 
now rising and now falling— seem struggling for 
the mastery. In anger, for example, we desire to 
strike, but we fear the consequences, or we are 
moved with shame at our lack of self-control. In 
fear, we find pride struggling to overcome fear. 
A strong sense of justice contending with the affec- 
tions of love and pity, forms some of the most hard 
and bitter struggles of our human social experi- 
ence. On the physiological side, therefore, the vio- 
lent emotions give token of a sort of ** brain storm'* 



TEE FUNCTION OF TEE TEACEEB 125 

of more or less intensity and extent; while on the 
side of consciousness, we know them as a sort of 
temporary upsetting of the entire flow of the 
mind^s life. 

How shall the teacher deal with these stronger 
and more obviously sensational forms of emotion — 
the passions, appetites, and other outbursts of feel- 
ing, in the pupil, so far as they come under his 
charge? There is one principle which he must 
never lose out of his mind, as applicable, first of all, 
to his own case, and then to the case of others also. 
The principle is this: While the emotions move to 
action and tend to control the will, they are them- 
selves, in turn, under the control of the will. The 
existence of strong natural passions is by no means 
a necessary disadvantage to the success of the high- 
est aims of the process of education, whether in the 
teacher or in the pupil. But all forms of emotion 
tend to wreck the individual and to disorder society 
if they are not brought under control. The teach- 
er's aim is not to suppress wholly or to eradicate 
the emotions, but to direct and discipline them. 
This we must do for ourselves, if we are going to 
maintain any show of reason in the attempt to do it 
for others. 

Both in ourselves and in others, the control of the 
emotions is most easily exercised in two ways. I 
am speaking of first control, as it were. The habit 
of self-control that issues in a refined and powerful 



126 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

personality can be gained only througli years of 
practise under the influence of the higher and 
purer forms of sentiment. 

One of the two most effective means which may 
be employed for the application of the will to the 
immediate control of strong and undesirable forms 
of emotional excitement is to be found in the indul- 
gence or the suppression of the bodily expression. 
Each of these forms of emotion is supposed to have 
its more or less marked form of effect upon the 
external organs. For example, there is the clinch- 
ing of the fists and gritting of the teeth, in anger, 
to which reference has just been made; the trem- 
bling of the limbs and tendency to run away, in 
fear; the hanging of the head and tendency of the 
shoulders to collapse, in despair- the longing to 
embrace, in love, etc., etc. If the will is firmly and 
persistently set toward the removal of the bodily 
basis, which not only expresses, but also supports, 
the peculiar form of emotion it is desired to bring 
under control, then the emotion itself can not long 
maintain itself at a high pitch of intensity. The 
mad and untamed child throws itself down upon 
the floor and proceeds to beat it with fists and feet ; 
if it could be persuaded to stretch itself out there 
and lie relaxed, its fit of temper would soon sub- 
side. On the other hand, the emotion of patriotism, 
or of admiration for the hero in the procession or 
the speaker on the platform, is not only exprest, 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 127 

but also built up, on a basis of clapping of hands 
and of cheering. Here the principle of imitation 
also comes into play. This is the secret of the trick 
of what the French call Claque to start apprecia- 
tion for a poor play in the theater. In somewhat 
the same way, the politically professional expert 
estimates the present and prospective enthusiasm 
for the candidate by the number of minutes that 
his partizans can keep up their cheering. If it is 
a bad and undesirable emotion, take out from under 
it its bodily accompaniment; if it is a good and 
desirable emotion, stimulate and build up its bodily 
basis. These are valuable suggestions for the 
teacher in his efforts at forming the character of 
his pupils through the control of their emotions. 
The other most effective means for the immediate 
control of the emotions is to be found in the direc- 
tion of the attention so as to control the associated 
trains of ideas. Nothing can be shrewder or more 
psychologically appropriate than such exhortations 
as * ' Don 't mind him, " if he has done something to 
make you angry; or, ''Don't think about it," if 
some great disappointment has recently happened. 
How often have I admired the skill with which 
ignorant mothers and nurses remove the painful 
emotions from the minds of children by directing 
the attention away from them. But it must never 
be forgotten that even the child's mind cannot be 
satisfied with vacancy in the stead of a recent over- 



128 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

powering state of feeling. The positive direction of 
the mind to something equally interesting gives 
scope to the tact of the teacher in this form of con- 
trol over the emotions. 

Now, since all the normal human appetites, 
passions, and affections, have their place in the 
development of the individual and in the progress 
of society, all of them are to be cultivated with tact 
in selection and with a sense of proportion. Some- 
times the pupil, as well as the teacher, should get 
mad ; and sometimes he should stand in fear ; some- 
times his pride may be indulged, tho often represt ; 
and not infrequently, it is likely— at any rate in 
some cases — he ought to be made ashamed of him- 
self. If he is not hungry and thirsty several times 
a day, and if the vaguer or more pronounced mov- 
ings of the feelings of sex are not experienced at 
a certain age, then the pupil is not a healthy and 
normal human being. And the pupil is at least as 
sure as is the teacher to get tired, when overworked 
and occasionally to be most thoroughly disgusted 
with the schoolroom and with the whole dreary 
business of education. I have always felt a keen 
fellow-feeling with the minister, who when his vaca- 
tion came, kicked up his heels and ** thanked the 
Lord that he hadn't got to preach or pray for six 
weeks. ' ' Nor am I necessarily less sympathetic with 
the boy who sometimes wishes heartily that school 
were over so that he could get to his game of base- 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 129 

ball; or that Saturday had come, so that he could 
go afishing. 

Into this complex of concurring or contending 
emotions, that are motives to various forms of con- 
duct, the work of education comes ; and it attempts 
to exercise a selective influence, to favor some and 
to discourage others, to apportion to some extent 
the results of their indulgence and repression ; in a 
word, to order them all, under the control of reason, 
in such manner as to cultivate a worthy personal 
life, and produce a useful member of the social 
whole. So perplexing, and yet so important is the 
teacher's function in the forming of character as 
dependent upon the culture of the emotions ! 

The relation of the work of education to the 
other of the two classes of feeling into which I 
found it convenient to make the division is an obvi- 
ous extension of the principles to which attention 
has already been directed. The nature of a so-called 
*' Sentiment, " altho it can not be absolutely dis- 
tinguished from an emotion, differs in these two 
respects, chiefly: A sentiment is relatively free 
from that mixture of bodily sensations which char- 
acterizes an emotion or a passion ; it is, in general, 
the mind's response to some idea of the higher 
order, or to some of the ideals of the mind's con- 
struction. All the more primitive and simpler 
forms of appetite and passion, and even of affec- 
tion, the human being seems to share with the most 



130 TEB TEAOHER'8 PBACTIOAL PHIL080PEY 

highly developed of the animals. Many of these 
are connected with the development of the organ- 
ism, and with the normal performances of animal 
functions that are necessary to the life of the indi- 
vidual and the perpetuation of the species. Even 
some of the forms of feeling connected with the 
intellectual development of man have their pro- 
totypes or resemblances in the life of the lower ani- 
mals. Such are the feeling of curiosity, the desire 
of acquisitiveness, a certain feeling of the rights of 
possession; and, especially, as hearing on the life 
of conduct, a considerable outfit of the various feel- 
ings of kinship and tribal sympathy. But there is 
much less evidence that any of the animals have 
any experience corresponding to that connected, in 
man's case, with the unfolding and refinement of 
the so-called sentiments of duty, beauty, and the 
life of religion. The character and the control of 
these higher forms of feeling over the lower is the 
determining thing in the formation of the charac- 
ter of the individual and of society. 

All noble and pure character must be formed 
largely under the influence of the sentiments ; and, 
more especially, of such sentiments as are awakened 
by the more important and nobler social relations, 
and under the guidance of the more important and 
purer of the artistic, moral, and religious ideals. 
A person of pure, exalted, and truly noble senti- 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 131 

ments is, so far aa feeling is concerned, a person of 
pure, exalted, and noble character. 

In the estimate and, especially, in the practical 
cultivation of the sentiments, a distinction between 
sentiment and sentimentality needs constantly to be 
borne in mind. For there are certain manifesta- 
tions of the forms of feeling, that are in themselves 
higher, which are weakening or exaggerated. Sym- 
pathy and pity are fine sentiments ; but the former 
may easily become maudlin, and the latter may be 
felt and displayed in such way as to thwart or dis- 
gust the equally fine sentiments of honor or of jus- 
tice. It is such sentiments as these— honor, justice, 
loyalty, reverence, and devotion to duty — which 
chiefly signify and promote genuineness and 
strength of character. Their basic qualities, and 
primary social importance, can never be safely 
neglected in the work of education. Even their 
exaggeration, as in the traditional educational sys- 
tem of Japan, is more productive of a high type of 
manhood and womanhood, than is a certain ten- 
dency to excessive sentimentality which has shown 
itself rather prominently in this country, in the 
most recent times. It is well to form Societies for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Anti-Vivi- 
section Societies, and what not, of similar sort ; but 
it would be better to cultivate, both individually 
and socially, a more passionate and effective senti- 
ment of justice in our courts of law, a higher and 



132 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

more effective regard for honor and truthfulness 
in business, and a greater reverence toward parents, 
elders, and those distinguished for service in the 
church and in the state. 

Several of the suggestions already made with 
regard to the teacher's function in arousing and 
training the emotions apply, with an added force, 
to his work in the interests of a well-formed char- 
acter, as dependent upon the cultivation of the 
higher kinds of feeling, the so-called sentiments. 
Only, in the case of the sentiments, the work con- 
sists almost none at all, in a study of the best meth- 
ods of their repression. It consists almost wholly, 
on the contrary, in arousing the feelings and direct- 
ing them to the appropriate objects. 

For the awakening of the sentiments a most valu- 
able group of suggestions follows from the psycho- 
logically true fact of experience, that even the appe- 
tites, passions, and lower affections of human 
nature may be so cultured as to take on the form 
of a sentiment, or to become the promoter of some 
form of sentiment. Thus the natural passion of 
anger, when cultivated, develops into the sentiment 
of justice; indeed, without this passion of anger, 
the sentiment would be a cold and nerveless thing 
—merely an ineffective sort of idea. So the passion 
of jealousy may become the cultivated sentiment 
which safeguards reputation and the domestic life. 

In all that has been said hitherto, it has been 



THE FUNCTION OP THE TEACHER 133 

assumed that the formation of character is depen- 
dent upon the training of the will. But by these 
words, ^Hhe Will/' we must not understand, as 
seemed formerly to be implied in the current lan- 
guage of psychology, any separate faculty. The 
rather, are we to understand by the term, at least 
as used in this connection, the entire active side 
or aspect, of human nature. To will rightly and 
worthily involves, then, the connected and associ- 
ated growth of all the different functions of the 
mental life. The development of the will is the 
development of the Self. And this is the end of 
education, so far as the individual is concerned. 
The function of the teacher culminates when he 
trains the pupil in habits of right choice. The 
pupil is then ready to be handed over to himself. 
How much complexity, and how great need of 
the nature being touched and influenced at many 
points, there is in this educative process, we may 
glimpse, when we consider what are the factors 
involved in every deliberate choice. These are (1) 
mental representation of two or more ends, 
regarded as dependent on human action; (2) excite- 
ment of some desire or sentiment, which appreci- 
ates these ends as having value; (3) deliberation, 
involving the estimate of these ends, and of the 
risks and difficulties connected with their attain- 
ment ; (4) decision, or the bringing of the delibera- 
tion to a close by a so-called deed of will; (5) the 



134 THE TEACHER'S PRACTWAL PHILOSOPHY 

release of motor energy, with a view to carrying 
out the decision, or *' executive volition." Think 
over this list of factors, fellow teachers, and con- 
sider at how many points and in how many ways, 
one person who is favorably placed, may influence 
the deliberate choice of another. 

The training of will is, therefore, the most essen- 
tial thing in the formation of character. Funda- 
mentally considered, this, more than anything else, 
is what we understand by character — ^namely, a 
Self educated into habits of right choice. 

The method and stages of such a training may 
readily be brought into connection with the truths 
and suggestions which have occupied us in all the 
previous lectures. Good habits of will involve the 
control of the bodily organs, the control of the 
emotions and passions, the control of the attention 
and the associated ideas and trains of thought. 
This training also involves the eliciting and fixing 
of the purposes upon ideals— of knowledge, con- 
duct, art, social conditions, etc. And, finally, the 
training of good will involves the skilful dealing 
with different forms of bad will— such as impul- 
sive will, obstinate will, and hesitating will. 

In a word, I may sum up, in closing, this portion 
of an attempt at a teacher's Practical Philosophy, 
by reminding us that the culminating function of 
the professional teacher is the making of a person, 
or Self. For this purpose, the teacher i« placed in 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 136 

somewhat peculiar relations to his pupils, of a 
personal sort. Certain somewhat special forms of 
personal intercourse are committed to him. His 
position has its advantages and its disadvantages; 
but, on the whole, the former greatly predominate 
over the latter. And by the skilful and conscien- 
tious discharge of his manifold functions, he may 
succeed measurably well in the noblest kind of man- 
ufacture; this is the making of an improved kind 
of personal life. 



Part II 
THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 



LECTURE VII 

THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER: 
AS SELF-CULTIVATION 

That the professional teacher needs some special 
equipment for his work, is a statement which few, 
or none, would be found ready to dispute. Even 
the ditcher or navvy requires to learn the expert 
handling of spade and pickax. The artizan, the 
tradesman, the skilled laborer in any kind of 
enterprise must undergo some sort of apprentice- 
ship, in order that he may know how to handle his 
tools, but more especially, in order that he may 
know how to conduct himself under the conditions 
ordinary to his form of employment; and, as well, 
in view of the possible conditions arising at any 
time of the emergencies peculiar to it. Those whose 
business it is to deal with any form of life, and to 
assist in its cultivation and development into 
higher and more useful and beautiful products, 
need to have the knowledge of an expert in order 
to assist the forces of nature in their efforts after 
a more perfect result. We have, then, schools for 
manual training, and agricultural and horticul- 
tural schools; and in Japan, the Government 
founds fishery institutes, as well as oonunercial 

139 



140 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

colleges. But a particularly long and elaborate 
course of education is supposed to be indispensable 
for equipping the individual to enter upon the 
practise of any of the three so-called * learned 
professions." The very words indicate the fixed 
opinion that no amount of native tact and good 
sense, however coupled with desultory and un- 
directed reading, suffices to equip one for the 
practise of either medicine or the law, or for the 
services of the ministry. 

Now, one of the important convictions which I 
am endeavoring to awaken, foster, and justify, in 
the minds of all my hearers, is just this : Teaching 
is a learned profession; it should be earnestly 
studied and practised with professional con- 
scientiousness and professional pride. It follows, 
as a matter of course, that the professional teacher 
must have a fit professional equipment. It is 
with this principle in view that the state is found- 
ing Normal Schools and Teachers' Colleges, is 
more and more requiring an advanced education of 
the candidates for its positions; and is making 
more difficult to pass, the examinations which it 
holds before the candidates, at the entrance to 
these positions. 

I am now going to raise certain inquiries, and 
make certain suggestions, regarding the proper 
equipment for the professional teacher. In doing 
this I shall continue to hold, even more firmly if 



THE EQUIPMENT OF TEE TEACHER 141 

possible, to the point of view already taken. This 
leads me to say at once, that the all-inclusive 
equipment for the successful fulfilment of the obli- 
gations of this particular kind of personal relation, 
is that the teacher shall be the right kind of a per- 
son. To say this, of course, defines nothing ; but it 
calls us back to our original point of view. Just 
as the teacher's work with the pupil culminates in 
the forming of character, so the most important 
and comprehensive equipment for the doing of this 
work, is the possession of a sound and high-toned 
character. 

In order the better to understand the relation 
between the teacher's work and the teacher's equip- 
ment, in this aspect of both, it is worth while to 
dwell for a few moments upon the conception of 
character. This word, like all others, may be used 
with a variety of meanings and with a broader or 
narrower significance. As I wish to employ it, how- 
ever, it emphasizes the comprehensiveness of char- 
acter. A whole treatise on ethics would be required 
to elaborate this thought, but, so important is it 
for my immediate purposes, that I am going to run 
some risk of wearying you with commonplaces by 
speaking at considerable length concerning the sub- 
ject. 

In the first place, I call your attention to the 
somewhat neglected truth, that a sound and noble 
character involves and requires self-cultivation of 



142 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the intellect and of tile powers of thinking clearly 
and comprehensively. There have been in this 
country so many triumphs, amounting to seeming, 
if not really great successes, on the part of unedu- 
cated and so-called self-made men, that the neces- 
sity of a trained mind for a good and successful 
living, in any pursuit or calling, has been underes- 
timated or supprest. But two things are to be 
noted about all this. These really successful men 
have with few exceptions, given great diligence and 
attention to the self -training of their minds; and 
they have, with scarcely more exceptions, either 
openly or secretly lamented their lack of early and 
prolonged education. It is, in general, only vulgar 
and unscrupulous politicians, and equally vulgar 
and unscrupulous business men, — both of whom are 
persons of bad character, — ^who are wont to dis- 
esteem the prolonged discipline of the mind, under 
the influences of the more advanced forms of edu- 
cation. This, our attitude toward the moral obli- 
gation to secure as much as possible of intellectual 
growth, is psychologically, ethically, and histori- 
cally justifiable. 

In defense of this position, I pass on to say that 
voluntary ignorance, or failure to discipline to 
their right use the intellectual faculties, is wrong- 
doing and is surely productive of an unsound and 
ignoble character. The pupil in the higher grades 
of the public school, but especially in college or in 



TEE EQUIPMENT OF THB TEACHER 143 

the itniversity, who shirks or scamps his work, is 
not simply guilty of something inexpedient, but 
also of something immoral. And the teacher, who 
does not do his best to impress the pupil with this 
fact, fails of his opportunity as a former of sound 
and noble moral character. Nature puts a premium 
on brains, and Heaven exacts a penalty for their 
misuse or disuse. 

Not only is the true theory of the virtues and the 
practise of virtuous living dependent upon the cul- 
tivation of the intellect, but there are certain of the 
virtues, the very nature of which entitles them to 
be called *' virtues of the intellect." This is not 
because they do not, as do all the other virtues, 
involve right feeling and the exercise of will, but 
because they especially call into activity the intel- 
lectual faculties, and because they require the cul- 
tivation of the intellect for their own best 
development. Such are the virtues of wisdom, 
justness, trueness, etc. The individual man can not 
attain a high degree of wisdom, — a virtue which 
is, essentially, the employment of mind, with its 
discriminating and reasoning powers, in the selec- 
tion of means and ends which correspond to moral 
ideals, — ^without a trained mind. It is not on the 
bench alone, but also on the teacher's platform 
that the sharpest uses of a trained intellect are 
needed, in order to discriminate what is just, and 
to devise ways for seeing that justice is actually 



144 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

done. And nothing more effectually underminefa «» 
teacher's influence for good over his pupils than to 
lose the reputation of being a just person. Nor is 
there lack of true insight in the popular saying that 
such or such a person does **not know enough to 
tell the truth, even if he wanted to.'' What can, 
indeed, be more obvious than that trained judgment 
is the prime requisite, and next to good will indis- 
pensable, for the practise of wisdom, justness, and 
trueness, in the professional equipment of the 
teacher ? 

And, finally, how can one person hope to stim- 
ulate, and assist, and direct, the mental training 
of another, without having passed through the 
stages of mental self -culture or without manifesting 
a constant and serious interest in mental self- 
culture? 

Even more obviously true is it that a sound and 
noble character involves self-cultivation of the 
emotions and sentiments. This is, indeed, so obvi- 
ous and generally acknowledged as scarcely to need 
elaboration. Everybody recognizes the truth that 
*'good character" implies the control of the appe- 
tites and passions, and of the so-called lower emo- 
tions. That the finest character is dependent upon 
the strength and refinement of the sentiments, the 
higher forms of feeling, is equally true, if not so 
obvious and universally acknowledged. To take an 
instance : Gratitude is, I fear, rather a rare form 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 145 

of the noblest sentiments, to express itself in the 
relations maintained between teacher and pupil in 
this country at the present time. There still exists 
a commendable degree of this virtue in the attitude 
of the children of the socially lower classes— more 
especially among foreigners — toward the teacher 
who has won their confidence and affection. In the 
Orient, as I can testify from a large experience and 
with a full heart, it is much more admirably strong 
and tender, than is wont to be the case with us, if 
we happen to have our work with the children of 
the rich and socially higher classes. Here is a 
sentiment, to miss the exercise and cultivation of 
which is a dire calamity for the pupil; but which 
the teacher can not, from the very nature of the 
case, cultivate as directed toward himself. And 
there are many obstacles, some of which may easily 
render his attempt ridiculous, even if he attempts 
to awaken the sentiment toward others most inti- 
mately related to the pupil. How can we expect 
to make the child, by any process of exhortation 
or instruction, grateful toward the drunken father 
who beats him, or the shiftless mother who neglects 
him; or the young man or young woman, grateful 
toward parents who are themselves living selfishly, 
and who have reared their children to begin life 
with the same selfish aims and low estimates of 
life's values? There would seem, then, to be left 
only the way of example for the cultivation of the 



146 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

virtuous sentiment of gratitude. Perhaps if the 
teachers would show before their pupils more grat- 
itude toward the men and women who taught them, 
they would in this round-about way do the utmost 
to cultivate this noble sentiment. 

The same difficulties do not, however, accompany 
the teacher's attempts to cultivate in himself, and 
by way of example in his pupils, the sentiments of 
loyalty, benevolence, love of truth and justice, and 
the feelings evoked by the appreciation of beauty 
and of moral excellence. All these forces of fine 
character contribute to that equipment of the 
teacher which is most essential to the highest 
success in the work of education. 

For, just as there are important gifts and acqui- 
sitions of the moral sort, which are fittingly spoken 
of as '* virtues of the intellect,'' so there are equally 
important gifts and acquisitions which may, with 
equal propriety, be spoken of as ''virtues of the 
heart." Such virtues show themselves in the 
hospitable, kind, gentle and polite treatment of our 
fellows, irrespective of race, wealth, or social posi- 
tion. I am inclined to say of teachers in the public- 
school system of the United States, at the present 
time, what I am quite ready to say of the ministry 
of today, that the most useful of all qualifications 
is that they should be real gentlemen, that they 
should be real ladies. Gentleness in manners is 
quite compatible with firmness in judgment and 



TEE EQUIPMEl^T OF TEE TEACEER 147 

will; and politeness, where it proceeds from a 
kindly disposition and from acquaintance with, the 
forms of behavior expected in genuinely *'good 
society," is no insignificant virtue. Nothing can 
be further from the truth than the notion that 
roughness, and bluffness, and coarseness, are indica- 
tive of a courageous and strong character. 

But, above all, does a sound and noble character 
involve a disciplined and self-controlled will. 
Indeed, here is the central point of all the self- 
cultivation of character. I have already remarked 
upon the fact that, in the earlier stages of education 
the active use of the faculties of the learner must 
be to a large extent, induced or forced by extran- 
eous motives. But if the process of coaxing and 
forcing succeeds, these so-called active powers 
become trained to a higher form of 5eZ/-activity, 
and finally become thoroughly enlisted in the inter- 
ests of 5eV-cultivation. It is, of course, man's 
power of self-control that makes him able, as the 
lower animals are not able, to cultivate himself. If 
any one were inclined to dispute the distinction 
which I made in an earlier lecture between the 
education of the human being and the training of 
the animals, even he would scarcely have the 
courage to maintain that the animals in general can 
become thoroughly interested in gaining for them- 
selves a higher degree of self -culture, by the volun- 
tary and persistent adoption of a course of self- 



148 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

education. But this is precisely what the human 
being may be educated to do. And it is precisely 
what every professional teacher is in duty bound 
to do. His position, in the exercise of the function 
of forming the character of others puts him under 
obligation to undertake and diligently to pursue 
the self-cultivation of character. 

Again, we may notice that a third class of the 
most important forms of virtuous living empha- 
sizes the power of self-control ; they may, therefore, 
not inappropriately, be called *' virtues of the will." 
Such virtues are courage, or the control over our 
fears ; temperance, or the control over our appetites 
and passions; and constancy, or the kind of will 
which holds the individual steadily on his way in 
the face of obstacles and of disappointment, and 
which is the opposite of the prevalent fickleness. No 
other class of persons, I maintain, need more of 
these fundamental virtues of the will, than do the 
teachers of the country at the present time. The 
courage required by the common soldier in our 
army, or by the midshipman in our navy, under 
existing circumstances, bears no comparison with 
that required by the country schoolma'am, or the 
teacher of a ward school in any of our cities, as 
she faces her pupils at the beginning of her first 
day 's task with them. And I must say that I very 
much doubt whether those gentlemen, in case of a 
call to a real and desperate fighting, would acquit 



TEE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 149 

themselves so well as does the average woman 
teacher when she is put to the test in the manner 
of her profession. 

If the comprehensiveness of what we call charac- 
ter is made evident when we consider the subject 
from the psychological point of view, so also is the 
worth of character, when we consider it from the 
ethical point of view. According to the sayings 
of the great philosopher, Immanuel Kant, the only 
thing of an absolutely unconditioned worth is a 
* * Good Will. ' ' And by a good will, as he employed 
the term, we may understand a self-determined 
and self -cultivated good character. 

In illustrating this truth, we may profitably 
employ the common distinction of things that have 
value or worth, into instrumental values, or things 
that are valuable as means to ends, and uncon- 
ditioned values, or things that have value in them- 
selves. It is difficult to maintain this distinction 
throughout in any absolute way. But we may say 
that happiness, truth, beauty, and moral goodness, 
are all ends to be sought in some sort for their own 
sake ; and for the seeking of which we think it right 
to use other things called ' ' good, ' ' as means useful 
to the attainment of these ends. I shall not argue 
the case with utilitarianism, which claims that mor- 
ality is a good only because it is an end to happi- 
ness; or with pragmatism, so-called, which has 
made the utterly vain and even mischievous attempt 



150 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

to resolve the good of truth into some form of the 
useful for practical purposes. For the end I have 
in view in this course of lectures — it has already- 
been made clear — is not the establishment of a 
psychology or a philosophy of education, but a 
survey of the grounds on which we may place our 
estimate of our ethical opportunities and respon- 
sibilities as professional teachers. But this pur- 
pose of mine has already led us to place the highest 
estimate upon the worth of character as a neces- 
sity for the teacher's equipment. It is a sound and 
noble personality in which all the things of highest 
worth find their most complete realization. Such 
a personality unites, in a manner not to be paral- 
leled elsewhere, the good things of happiness, truth, 
beauty, and moral excellence. A society composed 
of such persons would, if it could be attained, 
realize the ideal of a supreme and unconditioned 
worth. But it is only as composed of individuals, 
who are self-cultivated in such a character, that 
this social ideal can ever be progressively and ap- 
proximately realized. Now the function of the 
teacher is to assist in an exceedingly important and 
effective way, in the promotion of this individual 
and social ideal. But in order to render valid 
assistance the teacher must undertake the self-culti- 
vation of the same ideal. For it is not by fault- 
finding or by exhortation that the securing of this 
Bort of equipment will come to be prized and 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 151 

soiiglit after by our profession ; nor is it by giving 
glowing but largely falsified certificates to school- 
teachers* agencies, or to college presidents, or to 
principals and superintendents, that success can be 
guaranteed. It must, the rather, be by way of each 
one of us making the growth of such a character a 
matter of aspiration, so as to afford a stimulus and 
a pattern for our pupils and for one another. 

In carrying out our aspirations for this kind of 
equipment, however, we must not forget or neglect 
the consideration of method. Here the doctrine of 
method is an essential part of the very conception 
itself. As we have already seen, the attainment of 
a high-class character is possible only by the 
method of self-cultivation. It can not be absorbed 
or made a matter of gift, or expected as a chance 
growth. "We may employ others to make for us 
all manner of things that are good as means toward 
the ultimate ends of life. We can purchase houses, 
clothing, transportation, books, toys, or jewelry, or 
bric-a-brac. We may go to external nature and ask 
her to grow for us her grains and her fruits, or to 
yield up to us her stores of metal— of iron, silver 
and gold. We may resort to books and to the living 
teacher for information, for stores of knowledge, 
and for the happiness which good literature and 
improving conversation can bestow. But, in the 
last resort, we must make our characters for our- 
selves. Inheritance, environment, and personal 



152 TEE TEACEER'8 PRACTICAL PEIL080PEY 

influence largely determine, without doubt, what 
that character will ultimately be. Only as these 
things arouse and guide, or else deaden and blind 
our very Selves in the work of taking themselves 
in hand and making out of the raw material fur- 
nished by ancestry and surroundings, the finest 
possible product, will success be attained. 

We recur again, to our most comprehensive point 
of standing and of observation : The very concep- 
tion of character is such as to make it the most 
important part of the teacher's equipment for the 
successful discharge of his most important func- 
tion. This function is a species of personal inter- 
course. Its culminating interest is the forming of 
personal character. The teacher must, then, him- 
self possess this right character; and to get it is 
possible only through self -culture. 

But now the question arises: How shall this 
thing of highest value— a sound and noble charac- 
ter—be brought into requisition and made of prac- 
tical use in the teacher's work of education? The 
negative side of the answer to this question receives 
abundant, and sometimes more than abundant, 
emphasis and attention. A bad and ignoble char- 
acter makes impossible the highest success in the 
work of education. But how does a good and noble 
character positively contribute to the success of the 
person engaged in the work of education? This is 
a question which is not usually made so prominent. 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 153 

and the answer to which is not, at first blush, quite 
so evident. 

It is by no means true that the most obviously 
virtuous— certainly not the most conspicuously 
''goody-goody"— teachers are also the conspicu- 
ously most successful with their pupils in the work 
of education. Plainly, then, in order to make our 
theory tally with the facts, we must interpret the 
theory liberally, and scrutinize the facts critically. 
But for this we have already prepared the way. 
The virtuous character which we have been com- 
mending is virile and adaptable to the actual con- 
ditions of human life, in its present imperfect and 
confusing social environment; and the success at 
which the conscientious teacher is aiming, may be 
something quite inaccurately measured by the 
rating of examination papers, or the certificates of 
school-boards, or even the temporary estimates of 
the pupils themselves. 

Taking all the variable and uncertain factors 
into the account, it is only reasonable to expect 
that good character will go a long way toward pre- 
venting certain mistakes which are highly injuri- 
ous, or even fatal, to the best success of the teacher. 
Such are the mistakes of habitual deceit or lying, of 
hasty injustice or more deliberate partiality, of 
unkindness and cruelty, of indifference or con- 
tempt, of self-indulgence or laziness, of shamming 
or pretense. Such are some of those breaches of 



154 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

good conduct to which we teachers are continually 
tempted and peculiarly liable. For the teacher, 
whose attitude toward the scholastic improvement 
and moral welfare of his pupils is one of habitual 
indifference or open contempt, I, for my part, have 
absolutely no respect, no matter how brilliant his 
scholarship, or seemingly successful, as judged by 
his own imperfect standards, his work may be. But 
I suppose there are few of us who would not feel 
compelled to plead guilty to occasional fits of only 
half-excusable laziness, and to not more than half- 
justifiable concealing, rather than confessing, of our 
ignorance, and so of incurring before our own 
consciences, at least, the charge of shamming or 
pretense. Indeed, it may be a legitimate subject 
for casuistical inquiry : * ' How much shamming and 
pretense of knowledge is morally justifiable on the 
teacher's part? Is it one-half, or two- thirds, as 
much as the doctor is justified in employing V In 
neither case will the patient permit the one looked 
to as an authority, discreetly to preserve silence. 
But, in neither case can the authority be always 
confessing ignorance without impairing all sem- 
blance of being an authority. Like all questions 
of conduct, these demand for their practical solu- 
tion experience and tact, that are backed up and 
enforced by a sound and noble character. And 
without such a character, no amount of learning, 
or skill in the use of method, can enable the teacher 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 155 

to substitute for the deficiency in equipment which 
is occasioned by such immoralities as these. 

On the contrary, the possession of a sound and 
noble character secures for the teacher the follow- 
ing, among other, advantages and their results. 
This it inevitably does, because the central thing 
about such a character is that right-royal '^good 
will J*' which shows its goodness by fixing a stead- 
fast and intelligent purpose on the bringing about 
of the desired results. Such a will guides the per- 
sonality in self-development, and works the silent, 
but powerful effects of an example approved by 
others. In the Orient, although the conception of 
the value of personal life, as applied to every indi- 
vidual, still lags far behind the height to which the 
Christian religion, and the prevalent form of polit- 
ical development, have raised the same conception 
among the Western nations, the effect of personal 
influence as proceeding from certain great and 
selected examples is made much more of in their 
system of education than is the case with us. The 
Confucian doctrine of Heaven's dealing with 
nations implies the inestimable influence for good 
or for evil, of the example of the supreme ruler of 
the nation. This, you will remember, is the phil- 
osophy of history which underlies the narratives 
of the Old Testament. High up in the scale of this 
kind of influence, the teacher is placed by thi^? 
Oriental conception and its corresponding form of 



156 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

^ practise. The good teacher is something more than 
an instructor in the current sciences ; he is a rabbi, 
a master, a person who is wise and worthy of being 
copied in his views of life, and in his practical ways 
of living. Perhaps we can never establish in our 
country this ancient, Oriental estimate of the 
power and the value of the teacher's example, 
upon the young and upon the whole national life. 
Perhaps, too, we ought not to wish to establish it. 
But we can not abrogate, and it is highly desir- 
able that we should not further diminish, the psy- 
chological laws which will always make the moral 
character of the teachers of any land, by their 
example, one of the most powerful of all influences 
over the moral character of the people of the land. 
Furthermore: The higher our estimate of the 
value of varied and exact knowledge of subjects and 
of methods becomes, as a necessary part of the 
equipment of the successful teacher, the higher 
must rise also our estimate of that other kind of 
equipment which consists in the possession of a 
sound and noble character. For it furnishes the 
purpose, which leads and stimulates the person 
whose purpose it is, to attain and to develop all 
the other more important factors in the equipment 
of the professional teacher for the most successful 
discharge of his function. This purpose will do 
all that is wise, under the circumstances of the 
individual, to provide means for the necessary 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 157 

growth of knowledge, the improvment of one's 
standing in science, and one's skill in the right use 
of method. 

But, especially, does good will tend to cultivate 
those relations of confidence, admiring trust, and 
even personal affection, which favor so powerfully 
the ability of the teacher to discharge successfully 
the daily duties, and to seize the opportunities, of 
his appointed task. 

I have little doubt that this lecture has seemed to 
some of you almost intolerably solemn and sermon- 
like; and, perhaps correspondingly depressing 
rather than inspiring in its aim to stimulate self- 
cultivation of character as the most important 
equipment for the best success in the work of 
education. I take pleasure, therefore, in conclud- 
ing the subject with some remarks which may serve 
to lighten the feeling of downward pressure. This 
self-cultivation of character is not to be attained 
by over-much study of treatises on pedagogy, or 
even by prolonged prayer and excessive fasting. It 
is, the rather, to be grown into by the cheerful and 
faithful discharge of the daily duties, with eyes 
open to unprejudiced and unselfish observation, 
and with the periods of work interrupted by suffi- 
cient rest and recreation. Peculiarly happy is that 
teacher who sincerely loves the work of teaching, 
and who is, therefore, most likely to be happy in 
this work. 



158 TEE TEACHER' 8 PRACTICAL PHIL080PHY 

And the self-cultivation of character does not 
bind us to try to be precisely like anybody else 
that is, or has been, or ever will be ; but to aim at 
growing into the best kind of selves that our very 
own selves can be. In all corporate enterprises 
that employ a considerable number of persons, a 
certain amount of system, and of uniformity of aim 
and method must be insisted upon. An educational 
system, as well as an army, the civil service, the 
routine of business, demand some things that tend 
to give a semblance of likeness to all the persons 
who engage in the work of the whold. But the 
deeper varieties and dissimilarities of character 
remain. And in the teacher's cultivation of char- 
acter, and expression of character in the work of 
teaching, nothing approaching a very strict uni- 
formity should be either expected or sought. 

Frankly, then: I *'take little stock'* in the 
attempt to turn out numbers of teachers who seem 
to be alike, or who all teach alike. I would, in 
general, say to the accepted candidate : ^ ' Here you 
are, a man or a woman, supposed to be fitted for the 
position and the work which you assume to take. 
"We do not exhort you; we do not dictate to you. 
You have our sympathy; in all ways essentially 
right, and for you actually successful, you shall 
have our support. Go in, and win. Your own 
real success, in your own chosen way, will be your 
highest reward/' 



LECTURE YIII 

THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER: 
AS GROWTH IN KNOWLEDGE 

It has already been made apparent that a certain 
spirit of acquisitiveness and docility, with its result 
in the development of the intellectual faculties and 
in the growth of knowledge, are essential elements 
to the formation of a sound and noble character. 
That wisdom is a virtue is only a commonplace of 
morals. But, wisdom I have characterized as a vir- 
tue of the intellect. It enters into that sort of 
character which is at the same time the chief aim 
of education and also the most important qualifi- 
cation for the person fitted to take the active part 
in promoting the cause of public education. This 
indirect way, however, of emphasizing the truth 
that the professional teacher should be a ** particu- 
larly knowing person" is surely not enough. A 
special kind and degree of knowledge is, of course, 
an essential part of the requisite equipment of the 
professional teacher. Just as truly as the lawyer 
professes a special kind and degree of knowledge of 
the law; the physician of physiology, medicine and 
hygiene, and the minister, of religion ; so truly does 
the teacher profess the special kind and degree of 

159 



160 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

knowledge which his proposal to practise in the 
field of education demands. And like the profes- 
sional lawyer, physician, or minister, if the ''edu- 
cationalist" does not have what he professes, he 
runs the risk of being justly set down as a quack 
or a charlatan. The kind and the degree of knowl- 
edge professed may be pretty strictly limited, as it 
was in the case of the colored preacher who ad- 
mitted that it was ''poor preach" for poor pay; or 
of that other minister whose deacon objected to 
paying him this year for preaching the same ser- 
mons for which he had been paid the year before ; 
or of the ambitious young Japanese, who adver- 
tised for a moderate stipend to teach the English 
language as far as the letter K. But the teacher 
must render some equivalent by way of imparting 
knowledge; and this implies the possession on his 
own part, of the knowledge which it is promised 
to impart. 

In order, then, to lay on our consciences the duty 
and the opportunity of possessing ourselves of 
this necessary part of our equipment as profes- 
sional teachers, we must give some attention to the 
conditions and laws under which comes the acquire- 
ment of all professional knowledge. The most inclu- 
sive of these regulative principles may be stated in 
this familiar practical way: The teacher can no 
more than the pupil, have knowledge without gain- 
ing it by his own endeavors. For knowledge is pre- 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 161 

eminently one of those ' ' good things, ' ' all of which, 
according to the old Greek proverb, ''the gods sell 
to men, ' ' only if they are willing ' ' to pay the price 
in toil. ' ' And the very conditions which surround 
the system of education in the present day, and 
which determine the daily tasks both within and 
witht)ut the classroom, are such that the work of 
self-education, in the growth of knowledge, is never 
done. Most of us, who went through a long process 
of training, in many subjects and in various insti- 
tutions of a rising grade in their claims to ^'finish" 
the education of their pupils, can remember some- 
thing of the feeling of freedom and elation, with 
which we passed our last examination and finished 
our last graduating exercises. The period of learn- 
ing seemed over, perhaps ; at any rate, we had been 
dubbed ** bachelors" or "masters" of the arts or of 
science ; or even doctors of philosophy and ' ' educa- 
tionalists, ' ' qualified with the possession of a certifi- 
cate of the highest class. But if we indulged our- 
selves for any lengthy period in the pleasing 
illusion that now, for us, the age of the student and 
the learner was over, it was precisely from that 
period that the decay of our fitness to be a teacher 
at all, most significantly began. For the work 
of learning can never be separated from the work of 
teaching. 

The declaration which I have just made might 
be enforced by reference backward to what has 



162 TEE TEACHEB'8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

already been said about the nature of all human 
knowledge, and about the conditions of the develop- 
ment of the intellectual faculties of the individual. 
But it is better to enforce the same declaration by 
the broader, historical view, as it applies to the 
acquirement of knowledge by the race; and espe- 
cially, in the most modern times. Every branch of 
human knowledge is, and always has been, a contin- 
uous and unceasing development. But within the 
last century, and even within the last two decades, 
this development has been so startlingly rapid as 
greatly to modify all the so-called positive sciences, 
and quite radically to change some of them. Even 
the most abstract and **exacf — as we used to call 
them— of the sciences, such as pure mathematics 
and pure logic, which were formerly supposed to 
have the characteristics of a closed system of un- 
questioned assumptions and demonstrated conclu- 
sions, have been greatly disturbed, and are not yet 
made over anew. At any rate, the teacher who 
knows them only as they were developed fifty, and 
even twenty, years ago, can scarcely be said to know 
them well at all. But especially true is this rapid 
development, resulting in the discovery of innum- 
erable new facts, the adoption of new points of 
view, the overthrow of old laws, and the forthput- 
ting of new hypotheses— not to say, as yet, the 
establishment of a body of wholly new principles — 
of such applied sciences as physics, chemistry, biol- 



TEE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 163 

ogy; of tlie descriptive sciences of geography, his- 
tory, etc. ; and of the psychological sciences of eco- 
nomics, anthropology, ethics, etc. 

To expect any teacher who professes any one of 
these sciences— and almost every teacher in our 
public schools, and most of our teachers in the 
smaller colleges, are obliged to profess several of 
them— to make himself really and truly possessed of 
all this newly developed knowledge, is to expect the 
impossible. And the effort to exact from a candi- 
date any such profession is a form of cruelty which 
results in hypocrisy and shamming on the part of 
both those who appoint the teachers and also of the 
teachers appointed. On the other hand, the effort to 
teach any considerable part of this newly developed 
knowledge, or pretense of knowledge, as much of 
it really is, results in that system of cramming with 
a multiplicity of ill-digested and undigestible mate- 
rial, which is one principal curse of the modern sys- 
tem of public and university education in this 
country. 

Any person, however, who essayed to teach any 
one of these subjects, with no equipment in the 
form of a knowledge of some of its recent develop- 
ments, would be sadly handicapped, and guiltily 
so, unless his previous conditions had made the 
acquisition of such knowledge impossible. Even in 
the latter case, one would be inclined to add that so 
unfortunate a person ought not to teach at all, if 



164 THE TEACHER' 8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

any other more competent candidate can be found 
for the place, or if he can get any other sort of 
work than teaching which he can the better do. 
But what I wish especially t6 emphasize in this con- 
nection is the obligation of the teacher to be always 
learning, if not from the love of learning as a grat- 
ification of the noble thirst for knowledge, at least 
from the conscientious conviction that constant 
learning is indispensable for success in teaching; 
and, as well, that the development of knowledge 
in the race makes constant learning necessary to the 
claim to know anything at all, really and to good 
purpose. 

A few words may be of use in this connection as 
suggesting the relative values of the different means 
available by the average teacher for getting posses- 
sion of some of this new knowledge, and so of com- 
plying with the necessity for constant growth of 
knowledge as a part of his professional equipment. 
The different sources of supply of this commodity 
available, increasingly, even for teachers in the most 
isolated and out-of-the-way places, may be conven- 
iently divided into the following four: (1) observa- 
tion; (2) reading; (3) viva voce instruction, by 
conversation, lectures, etc. ; and (4) reflection. The 
second and third of these means are, indeed, not 
always available for every teacher, but the first and 
fourth always are, and they are not the least impor- 
tant. Let us consider a point or two with regard 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 165 

to each one of the four. Of course, the daily prac- 
tise of the teacher keeps constantly before the eye 
and the mind the two most important objects for 
his attentive and interested and profitable observa- 
tion. These are the teacher himself and his pupil. 
These two persons — so the whole course of our 
theorizing runs in this attempt to establish a 
*' Teachers' Practical Philosophy *' — are the main 
elements in all the educative process. Its success 
will be determined by the issues of the special kind 
of intercourse which takes place between these two 
persons. Now, watching the pupils sharply, but 
not too sharply, for there are some things which it 
is desirable that the teacher should not see, is a 
highly praised way of gaining such knowledge as 
the teacher needs to have. But how about observing 
ourselves with a nearly equal sharpness and dili- 
gence? Surely this kind of observation may be 
productive of a very desirable sort of critical knowl- 
edge. In all the physico-chemical, natural and psy- 
chological sciences, there is much that is happening 
in our own physical and social environment, no 
matter how restricted that environment may be, 
which may add to our stock of new and useful 
knowledge. 

In speaking of the second source available for 
the unceasing growth of knowledge, the reading of 
books, I am strongly tempted to inveigh lengthily 
and violently against the meaness of the so-called 



166 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

educated public in America, with respect to the buy- 
ing and study of good books. In all the grades of 
our educational system, even including the pro- 
fessional schools (with, perhaps, the single excep- 
tion of the schools of medicine) it is increasingly 
difficult to secure among the students the private 
ownership and diligent study of thorough books. To 
give an example : When I was in college, there were 
few, or none, who thought it possible to pursue the 
study of the classical languages, without owning at 
least a half share in both a Greek and a Latin lexi- 
con, at a cost of five dollars each. And boys were 
much poorer then than now, and squandered almost 
nothing on athletics. Now, however, there is not 
more than one in twenty of the students of the 
classics who aims to have more than a 
meagre vocabulary at the end of his text-book, 
or a **pony," to assist him in a hasty guess- 
ing at the proper interpretation of the foreign 
words. The libraries of the ministers also show 
that they are doing little solid reading; even their 
pursuit of theology and of Biblical learning can 
scarcely be dignified with the name of reflective 
study of these professional subjects. How far, if at 
all, the teachers of so-called secular subjects are 
superior, in their eagerness to acquire, and willing- 
ness to pay for, and diligence to use, thorough 
books, I leave it for you to say. But I have little 
respect for a teacher who has no ambition to accu- 



TEE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 167 

mulate something of a library of such books ; and I 
have considerable admiration for the teacher who is 
willing to deny himself tickets to a baseball game, 
or a new pair of gloves, in order to obtain, by 
honorable purchase, a coveted new book. 

The means of growth in knowledge, which are 
open to us all, by way of frequenting lectures of the 
occasional kind, or attending conventions and 
summer-schools, or exchanging views in conversa- 
tion, may seem of exaggerated importance as com- 
pared with their cost in time, money, and nervous 
energy; but their great value can not be denied. 
The trouble is that those who are most talkative 
and ready to push for a place on the program, are 
by no means always best worthy of being listened 
to with the hope of receiving helpful instruction. 

But, to enhance the beneficial effects, and to 
minimize the injurious effects, of all the other 
means for growing in knowledge, we have always 
in our power the fourth, and in some respects the 
most effective means of all; and this consists in 
reflection. What we have observed, what we have 
read, what we have heard, that we can think over, 
when the quiet hour or the quiet minutes come. I 
know that alas, many of our hard-worked teachers 
have far too few such hours, or even minutes. I 
know that all our American life is far too much 
arranged and conducted in a manner to make reflec- 
tion difficult or impossible. Still, we can all of us 



168 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

at times choose to forego some other things which 
we should like to do, and occasionally we can even 
refuse to do some things which we seem to be 
required to do, in order to get a little time to spend 
with our own thoughts. I know of no more valuable 
advice to keep reiterating in the ears of the profes- 
sional teacher who aspires after a valid increase in 
his available stock of knowledge than this : ' ' Think 
it over, and think it over again, until you make its 
affirmation or denial your very own!" 

Back of the use of all means for acquiring knowl- 
edge, however, there is implied the continual exer- 
cise of a certain spirit on the part of the profes- 
sional teacher. This may be called the spirit of the 
learner, of the would-be knower, of the scholar. 
Its principal characteristics are of a semi-ethical 
nature^ and therefore depend largely on the posses- 
sion and development of a sound and noble 
character. 

First of all the factors to be discerned in the 
spirit of the learner is intellectual curiosity, or the 
desire to know. This is sometimes spoken of as 
the love of knowledge "for its own sake." But we 
can not regard knowledge as an entity, having an 
existence and a value of itself and apart from 
knowing minds. We may desire knowledge for 
our own mind's sake, and for the sake of other 
minds, who may be influenced by us. For it is 
human to desire to know; and the longing and the 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 169 

effort after knowledge is much more honorable and 
profitable than the ambition to be rich, or to have 
political power. Nothing is more foolish or more 
despicable than the attempt of the wealthy man, 
or the successful politician, to exalt his ambition 
above that of the scholar on the ground of its supe- 
rior practicality. That was a scathing, though 
sufficiently gruesome, answer of old Carlyle, who 
reminded the English "buck," when he was sneer- 
ing at the "men of ideas" in France, that the 
Frenchmen of the next generation were using the 
tanned hides of such fellows as he to bind the books 
of the men of ideas, withal (an actual fact). "All 
men," said the great Greek philosopher Aristotle, 
"have by nature a desire for knowledge." This 
same saying, Dante made a motto of in his Divine 
Comedy. If the spur of intellectual curiosity were 
withdrawn from man's breast, and its product in 
the shape of the men of ideas and ideals were to 
cease, all the falsely so-called "practical men" in 
the world would not suffice to advance science or to 
secure an improved social development. Now there 
is much in the work of the teacher, especially where 
it is apart from the intellectual and social centers 
and among dull and uninterested pupils, which 
tends to deaden the spirit of intellectual curiosity. 
We ask ourselves, perhaps, "What is the use of 
learning more, when so little use is called for, of 
what we already know V "To keep up the spirit of 



170 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the learner''— such may be at all times our sufficient 
answer. 

Docility, or the spirit of teachableness, is another 
characteristic of the person who longs for an 
increased possession of knowledge. Since Socrates, 
and before, it has been clear to the thoughtful, that 
the greater the knowledge, the more sincere the 
confession of ignorance. All the wonderful recent 
growths of all the positive sciences have only made 
more numerous, impressive, and mysterious, the 
problems which remain to be solved. The very 
function of teaching tends to cultivate a certain 
assumption of authority, of finality, which may 
degenerate into an unwarrantable pride of knowl- 
edge, or that *'cock-sureness'' about one's own 
opinions and views, which is decidedly unfavorable 
to all growth of knowledge. But, coupled with that 
firmness of tenure upon the truth, that assurance 
of knowing, which the teacher is entitled to have, 
there should always go an unlimited willingness to 
learn, a modest docility, a genuine spirit of teach- 
ableness. 

Fidelity is also an important factor of the spirit 
necessary to the continuous acquisition of knowl- 
edge. It is fidelity which secures the improvement 
of opportunity. Indeed, this virtue in the Confu- 
cian ethics, especially as its system has developed 
in Japan, has been made a sort of central and con- 
trolling virtue. Faithful in learning is the counter- 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 171 

part, the full complement, of faithful in teaching. 
And the teacher who is faithful as a scholar sets 
the pace to the fidelity in learning of the pupils 
under him. 

When these other factors are combined with 
patience— that especially difficult virtue for all 
ambitious minds— we have completed the slow- 
burning but effective enthusiasm for knowledge 
which leads to a continuous growth in its possession. 

"With such innumerable kinds and infinite degrees 
of knowledge open to the ambitious teacher, there 
is danger of confusion of purpose leading to ulti- 
mate bewilderment; and there is imminent and 
pressing need of selection. Into this jar of the rich 
fruits of modern science, we must not thrust a 
childish hand, and fill it so full of unselected sweet 
stuffs as to be unable to get the hand out again 
without emptying it of its choicest contents. What 
kind of knowledge, then, is required by the teacher 
in order to comply with a reasonable demand for 
the most serviceable equipment of knowledge? 
What shall I try to know something of, and what 
shall I be contented to know little or nothing about ? 
And if I try to learn anything about this and that, 
how much shall I try to know about this, and how 
much about that? To answer such questions as 
these, and by their answer to limit in a practical 
way, and to select in a wise way, the subjects and 
the proportions of our various knowledges, affords 



172 THE TEACHER'8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

some of the most difficult problems to the conscien- 
tious teacher. 

It has been well said, as bearing on the selection 
of studies for the curriculum of the higher educa- 
tion, that * * every educated man should know a little 
of many things, and as much as possible of some one 
thing. ' ' The saying expresses certain fundamental 
principles which apply to all the advanced stages 
of education, and so in some degree to the self- 
education of the teacher. It is a most fortunate 
thing for any one of our profession, when he is 
set to teach chiefly or solely those things about 
which he knows most, and about the knowledge of 
which he has most of enthusiasm and affection. 
But this can scarcely be the happy lot of those 
engaged in the earlier stages of the system of 
public education. And indeed, it is not true, nor 
likely soon to become true, of the majority of the 
professors in our smaller colleges. On the other 
hand, much more might be done than is now done, 
toward making it in a measure true even of the 
teachers of the public primary and secondary 
schools. There is, for example, no insuperable 
obstacle to making the teaching of spelling, or of 
reading, or of arithmetic, a sort of specialty; or 
in the way of one's coming to be something of a 
local celebrity in this kind of teaching ; or of getting 
up a real enthusiasm in doing well this elementary 
sort of work; or even of contributing something 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 173 

by way of the improvement of method, to the pro- 
fession at large. I am sure that I should rather win 
success as a teacher of spelling in some ward school 
of the lower grades, than fail as a teacher of 
ethics in some university, or of systematic theology 
in some theological seminary. 

But in case there are none of the subjects in 
which it is our special duty to give instruction, to 
possess an increased knowledge of which excites 
our enthusiastic effort, there is still another way 
open for securing the benefits of intellectual stimu- 
lus and of the scientific specialist 's method of study. 
We may teach reading, and be devoted to the study 
of German literature; we may teach spelling, and 
be devoted to American history; we may teach 
mathematics, and be devoted to botany. And if the 
influence of our devotions, in their control over 
time and endeavor is kept within proper limits, it 
will assist, rather than hinder, our success in what- 
ever may be the character of the work to which we 
are appointed as teachers. I have no hesitation, 
then, in advising you : ' ' Have a hobby, a specialty, 
a something in the form of an intellectual pursuit, 
which you are following with love and zeal, and 
with a view to get out of it all that there is in it. ' ' 
In this way you will be able the better to comply 
with those two— seemingly almost incompatible — 
demands which are made upon the teacher, for a 



174 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

special degree, both of many knowledges, and of 
some special kind of knowledge. 

Let us now briefly consider what these two 
demands are, and what is the possibility of a rea- 
sonable compliance with them. And, first, the 
teacher needs to have the appearance of being a 
*' well-informed person." This is eminently desir- 
able, not only for its influence over his pupils, their 
parents, and the community at large, but also as an 
important part of his equipment for the 
successful exercise of the teaching function. There 
is, no doubt, an excessive and absurd demand made 
upon the average teacher, to be a veritable fountain- 
head of every kind of wisdom and knowledge. I 
have myself been supposed to be an expert, and 
have been consulted as such, on subjects ranging 
all the way from the most rational conception of 
God to the most approved way of disposing of a 
crop of potatoes. Excessive and absurd as many 
of these demands are, there is another and more 
reasonable aspect to this whole way of looking upon 
the proper equipment of the teacher. He should 
be a person ''well-informed" on many subjects, a 
person of much so-called "general intelligence." 
For, the process of education through which he has 
already gone, and the unceasing process of self- 
cultivation through which he is in duty bound to 
be going, implies as much as this. It will not do 
for him to assume that because he is teaching 



TEE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 175 

psychology, he does not need to know anything of 
economics or history; or because he is teaching 
French, that he can afford to be wholly ignorant 
of the most obvious modem discoveries in physics 
and chemistry; or even because he is teaching 
reading and spelling, that all the business and poli- 
tics of the nation do not concern him. Moreover, 
the acquiring of knowledge on all these subjects and 
on all subjects, sharpens the wits, and trains the 
faculties, for their application to some special task ; 
while many of them so dovetail in together that 
increase in knowledge of any one of a large group 
is an essential gain to the amount of knowledge 
possessed about any other belonging to the same 
group or to allied groups. 

But the second of these two demands made upon 
the professional teacher is even more important. 
It is for a good deal of a certain kind of knowledge. 
The teacher must know something more than does 
the average man or woman of the science of the 
subjects which he professes to be able to teach. The 
knowledge that is professed, should be, in the truest 
and highest meaning of the word, possessed. But 
''possession'' means something more than a super- 
ficial acquaintance. It means that the knowledge 
must be (1) thorough, (2) accurate, (3) compre- 
hensive—so inwrought into the texture of the mind, 
as it were, as to become the person's very own. 
This is necessary in order to have the knowledge 



176 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

ready for natural and spontaneous expression. In 
a word, the knowledge must have become science. 
The chief characteristics of the knowledge that 
has become ''science/' in the most generous and 
fair application of the latter word, are the follow- 
ing. Such knowledge is known to some extent at 
least, in its grounds or reasons. It essays, and to 
some extent, at least, it offers, a tenable explana- 
tion of the information it imparts. It is true, there 
are many forms of science which still remain in the 
descriptive stage; there are some which will, per- 
haps, always remain largely in this stage. But 
science longs to answer the question, "Why? The 
skilful teacher never checks this question as it 
spontaneously rises to the lips of the child. It is 
the teacher's great chance, the best proof of an 
awakening intelligence. And, therefore, the 
teacher is always asking of himself, and of others, 
and of the books he reads, this same question, Why ? 
And as to the knowledge of fact, the knowledge of 
*'The Why" is added, the science of the subject 
grows. Closely connected with this characteristic 
of really scientific knowledge, is another— namely, 
that science includes the Imowledge of its own 
method of ascertainment, and of the nature of its 
proof. To our dying day the wisest one of us all 
will have to take on the authority of others the 
major part of what he may properly claim to 
know. But as much as possible, the ones among us 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 177 

who are ambitious to have a knowledge worthy to 
be called scientific, will wish to know as much as 
possible, how these very authorities came to know 
what they claim to know ; and upon what measure 
and kind of evidence their claim can be reposed. 

For the professional teacher, however, it is an 
especially valuable quality of the knowledge that 
is well and thoroughly possessed, that it is usually 
'^ communicable " knowledge. If we are to impart 
knowledge to others, our own knowing must be in 
the form, so to say, of a transmissible possession. 
In saying this, however, I do not in any way con- 
tradict, or abate in value, what was formerly said 
about the psychological truth that the transmission 
of knowledge requires that the person to whom the 
transfer is made, shall bear an important active 
part in the entire process. For education involves 
a species of conduct in which two persons are 
involved in almost equally important ways. 

I bring the treatment of this subject to a close 
by speaking briefly of some of the more important 
ways in which the teacher's equipment of knowledge 
is of practical use in the discharge of the work of 
teaching. The professional teacher in the school- 
room, like the professional teacher in the pulpit 
or on the judge's bench, or on the political plat- 
form, may easily proclaim, as tho he knew it to 
be true, a great deal which really is not true. And 
no doubt in each of these three cases, the pretense 



178 THE TEACHER'^ PRACTICAL PHILO&OPEY 

of knowledge will go some distance toward making 
up for the lack of real knowledge. Perhaps, also, in 
neither of these cases is the saying of our greatest 
American wit always applicable: "It is better not 
to know so much, than to know so much that isn't 
so.'' But I wish to call your attention to certain 
considerations which lie deeper than any that 
may be appealed to in these ways. 

The true possession and judicious use of knowl- 
edge makes the teacher influential as an inspiring 
example. Many a young mind is stimulated in 
this manner, to a practical admiration for knowl- 
edge, and to an active ambition to attain knowledge, 
like that which he sees, or imagines his teacher to 
possess. To see that knowledge is power, as the 
maxim is illustrated in a personal example, is 
better than to listen to the verbal reiteration of the 
maxim. 

It is the possession of knowledge about any sub- 
ject, which strongly tends to make just that subject 
most interesting to both teacher and pupil. There 
is no subject so dry and meager, nothing in exis- 
tence so simple, that the wisest of us may not always 
be learning something new about it. The more we 
know, the more there is to know; and the more 
that it seems worth our while to know. The 
flower, the tree, the stone, the bird's egg, the written 
or spoken word, the history of the village or of the 
country at large, the customs and laws of domestic. 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 179 

social, and political life — this increase of interest 
as the result of an increase of knowledge is true of 
all these subjects. 

But the possession of knowledge also enables 
the teacher to make, especially of the older pupils, 
compa. lions in his search after more and more accu- 
rate knowledge. Knowing what is already known, 
we know the better where to look in order to dis- 
cover, perhaps, what has thus far been unknown— 
by ourselves at least, or possibly even by the race. 
Nothing stimulates and pleases the pupil more than 
to find out something for himself. This is true of 
even young and immature minds. It gives the joy 
of discovery and of achievement. With the infant, 
it is a pleasure to find that paper will tear, that 
the toy trumpet will make a noise, and that the toy 
balloon will rise in the air. It is an important part 
of the knowledge of the scientific expert to know 
what it is that is not known, and where to look for 
the unknown, if haply he may find it. Thus his 
knowledge becomes more serviceable as an equip- 
ment for success in his professional work. 



LECTURE IX 

THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER: 
AS RIGHT USE OF METHOD 

Nothing is more obvious than that, however 
well equipped the teacher may be, both as respects 
personal character and as respects the kind and 
degree of his knowledge, unless he knows how to 
make use of his equipment, he can not attain a high 
success in his work. But when we begin to dis- 
cuss the ** methodology*' of education, we come at 
once upon almost endlessly debatable grounds. It 
was long, long ago pointed out, even by the great 
Greek philosopher, Aristotle, that each science has, 
on account of its very nature as a particular science, 
a method largely peculiar to itself. It was indeed, 
in justification of the treatment which he himself 
was proposing to give to the science of ethics, that 
this thinker made his observation with regard to 
the doctrine of method in general. But we are pro- 
posing to treat of all the topics brought up for dis- 
cussion, from the dominantly ethical point of view. 
Still further: The work of the teacher, as we are 
viewing it, is rather an art than an applied science. 
And the theorizer who attempts to enforce any very 
definite and strict doctrines of method, for the 

180 



TEE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 181 

governance of every individual artist, is undertak- 
ing a task which I do not covet, and upon which I 
should hesitate to venture. 

Let me, then, preface the few suggestions which I 
intend, with becoming modesty, afterward to make, 
by these two remarks. In the first place: It is 
difficult or impossible for the teacher, who is well 
equipped with a knowledge of his subject, and who 
has the purposes and the ideals of a truly noble 
character, to go wholly wrong in the use of educa- 
tional method. He may not adopt your most 
approved method, or mine; he may sometimes 
startle his superior officer, or the Board of Educa- 
tion which has appointed him; he may even dis- 
please some one of those very wise men who are 
presiding over the colleges and universities of the 
country ; and yet he may be using what for him is 
a very good, if not the absolutely best, method. In 
the majority of cases, however, it is the part of 
wisdom to give a large liberty to the individual 
teacher, with respect to the selection and use of 
his own particular way of doing his professional 
work. He is likely to know what he wants to do 
with his pupils; what has been either well or ill 
done in his own case and by his own teachers ; and 
from this knowledge, there follows, almost of neces- 
sity, a certain amount of experimenting which 
finally results in the acquirement of a fair amount 
of personal skill. 



182 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

But, second, it is not possible to teaeli, or even 
to determine for one's self what is, precisely, the 
best method, for every subject, for every class, for 
every individual teacher. Such a ''universal" ( ?) 
method is only to be approximately and progress- 
ively attained by a long course of experimenting, 
with the result of acquired tact and varied adapta- 
bility. Hence, for the individual teacher there is 
no escape from a course of experimenting in which 
the three elements, of Self, pupils, and subject, all 
have to be combined in ever varying proportions. 
Hence, too, the propriety of a large amount of wise 
letting-alone on the part of the superior authority. 
Those who appoint, and those who superintend, 
should judiciously refrain from too much inter- 
ference, or even minute instruction, not to say, 
dictation— as to how the individual teacher should 
do his work. 

I repeat, then, that it is by no means in a self- 
confident, but rather in a deprecatory way, that I 
venture to lay down a few principles, and make a 
few suggestions, with regard to the use of right 
method as, undoubtedly, an essential part of the 
teacher's equipment. And, now, at once I hark 
back to my original point of view — ^namely, that 
the work of the professional teacher is essentially 
a matter of personal intercourse; it should, there- 
fore, be controlled by the moral considerations 
which regulate all personal intercourse. 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 183 

But right method in teaching also depends upon 
the personality of the pupil— the one to be taught. 
If this principle could have full control, it would 
provide, of course, for the careful study of each 
individual case, with a view to ascertain just how 
that particular individual can be awakened, 
directed, informed, developed, and made into an 
enlightened, sound, and noble character. Any 
physical disabilities, due to defective eyesight, mal- 
nutrition, or obscure forms of disease, would have 
to be sought out and subjected to the most expert 
treatment. The length and difficulty of the lessons 
would have to be nicely adapted to each person as 
a somewhat separate case. The method of instruc- 
tion—whether object-lesson, oral instruction, or the 
text-book — would need to be selected and changed 
according to the pace set by this particular individ- 
ual. Such a minute adaptation of method to the 
individual pupil is an ideal, at present very remote 
from realization, if indeed it can ever be realized. 
And perhaps, it is well that it is never likely to be 
realized in any public system of education. For its 
working might have to be gained at the cost of some 
of the benefits of class exercises, and of rubbing 
hard against a multitude of other individuals- 
other pupils and other teachers— who are neither 
able nor disposed to treat us as though we were the 
only individuals on whom their special care is to be 
bestowed. 



184 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY, 

At the same time, I am convinced that, in our 
doctrine of method, and in our practise, we ought 
more constantly to bear in mind the truth, that 
every pupil is, and always must be, in some real 
sort, a special problem on which to exercise our 
skill. This is the truth by virtue of the individ- 
uality of every human being that ever has been, is 
now, or ever will be. The very nature of this indi- 
viduality is to be an exceedingly subtle and com- 
plex mixture of intellectual qualities, emotions and 
sentiments, and characteristics of the voluntary and 
motor sort. For this reason, different pupils will 
be stirred and lead by quite different sorts of 
appeal; some by appeal to intellectual curiosity; 
some by appeal to imagination; some by enforced 
or prompted exercise of memory; and some by an 
appeal to pride, or shame, or ambition, or the 
sentiment of loyalty, the sense of duty, or respon- 
sibility to God. So do the intellectual appetites of 
the individual boy or girl differ enormously. And 
in saying this, I do not refer to those marks of 
extraordinary talents, those suggestions of a possible 
genius, or those eccentricities and abnormalities, 
for the culture or eradication of which no definite 
rules can be given. But just plain and so-called 
*' ordinary'' boys and girls differ enormously. They 
are, indeed, members of the human species, and as 
such much more like the lowest savages or the so- 
called '* primitive men" of the same race, than 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 185 

they are like either animals or angels. But they 
are individuals ; and in the human species, individ- 
uality customarily means indefinitely more than it 
can mean in the case of any of the animal species. 
Again, it is a well recognized maxim that the suit- 
able method of teaching is largely conditioned by 
the stage of the pupil's development. But this is a 
consideration to which I shall return in another 
connection. 

Equally true is it, that the teacher must regard 
his own personal characteristics as entitled, to a 
certain extent, to shape the method of his teaching ; 
and to do this advantageously. Not all teachers can 
teach their best, in precisely the same way. Let 
it be granted that I was wrong when I said : *'From 
the purely theoretical point of view, there can 
never be a precise applied science of methodology 
in education." Still it would remain true as a 
matter of practise that we could never hope to get 
the best possible results from every individual 
teacher by enforcing conformity in any strict way 
to the rules of such a theoretically correct method- 
ology. Adjustments to the personal peculiarities, 
physical and mental and moral, and compromises 
required by varying conditions of age, sex, and 
economic and social influences and environment, 
would still make necessary differences of method, 
with different teachers, even with the same subjects 
and the same classes of pupils. The Socratic method 



186 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

did great things toward the awakening of thought 
and the eliciting of truth, as employed by its great 
master and his yet greater pupil, Plato. But some 
of the weakest and silliest work which I have ever 
known done, has been the result of an attempt on 
the part of aspiring young teachers, who might 
have been fairly successful in other ways, to handle 
the ''Socratic method." 

These considerations lead our minds at once to 
the thought of certain rights and certain duties 
which attach themselves to the office of the profes- 
sional teacher, and in which every individual 
teacher is entitled to some share. The teacher has 
a right, which may not be forfeited, to a certain 
amount of freedom for the expression of his own 
personality in the method which he employs. But 
as the complement, not the contradictory, of this, 
is the teacher's duty of self-control, with a view to 
bring himself into line, and to keep himself in line, 
with the requirements of the government, or of the 
social and educational environment, by which the 
nature and success of his work must be so largely 
determined. Of what avail is his pet method if, 
after having been given a fair trial, it will not 
work? 

We see, then, how complex is this problem of 
method in teaching. As viewed from the point of 
view which regards teaching as a species of per- 
sonal intercourse, the best results can only be 



TEE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 187 

reached and estimated, when we have taken into 
our account, (1) the individual characteristics of 
the pupil; (2) the individual characteristics of the 
teacher; (3) the conventionalities and customs 
regulated by the social or governmental establish- 
ment, so to say. 

In the stricter meaning of the word it may well 
be doubted whether any doctrine of pedagogic 
method can properly be called a ** science." But 
perhaps a more genial, if loose view of the term 
might justify its use in this connection. At any 
rate, it may surely be assumed that the experience 
of the race has established certain principles of 
procedure with which all the practical work of 
education ought to be in accord. It is, of course, 
impossible for us in a single lecture to discuss 
these principles with any thoroughness; or even 
to propose them with a claim to completeness. But 
they all seem to me to be capable of being fairly 
well summarized in the following comprehensive, 
if rather loose statement: *'The method of edu- 
cation should accord with the order, and the laws, 
of man's psychological development.'' This is only 
to say that the training of the human species, like 
the training of all living growths, while it is 
designed to improve nature, must take the clues 
to its proper procedure, from nature. The aim 
of education is not to substitute the artificial for 
the natural, but by furnishing favorable environ- 



188 TEE TEACnER'8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

ment, by suitable nourishment, and by judicious 
pruning, to assist nature into a nearer conformity 
to its own most nearly perfect type. 

What education tries to effect is a genuine and 
worthy psychological development, or unfolding of 
the active powers of a human soul, or mind. Its 
correct and successful method must, therefore, fol- 
low the course set by the very nature of the subject 
of development. Since human mental development 
is, in spite of occasional crises or epoch-making 
experiences, on the whole a fairly continuous affair, 
changes of the method employed to further this 
development should, in general, not be abrupt. 

The right method in teaching also depends upon 
the age, and stage in development, of the person 
to be taught. There should be a gradual, and 
almost imperceptible change, as the pupil climbs 
into the higher stages of culture. The earlier stages 
tolerate and require more of teaching with author- 
ity; the later authorize and demand more of rea- 
soning and of the methods which stimulate and 
answer the questions: *'How soT' and, '^WhyT' 
The young child may be told : ' ' It *> so " ; or, ' ' This 
is the way the thing should properly be done. ' ' To 
attempt to give the uneducated mind the evidence 
and the reasons for all it is set to learn, or to allow 
the untrained impulses to decide what order shall 
be kept, or how much work shall be done, in the 
schoolroom, is even more out of place than the 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 189 

effort to force the convictions, and deny the right 
to research, of the mature graduate or professional 
student. Even in the latter case, the teacher has 
no easy problem to solve, when he tries to prepare 
the right mixture of instruction with authority and 
self -initiated or self-conducted work. On the 
whole, however, I am inclined to think that both our 
kindergartens and our graduate and professional 
laboratories, seminars, clubs, and lecture courses, 
are conducted with too little strictness of discipline, 
and too great looseness of the sense of responsibility 
on the pupils ' part. In these important qualities, I 
am doubtful whether our national system of educa- 
tion, both higher and lower, is as successful as it 
was a generation ago. 

The stage in education which tolerates and re- 
quires more of teaching with authority, is also the 
stage of plastic memory and moldable opinions 
and judgments. This greatly favors the success 
of the skilful and conscientious teacher who can 
capture his pupils at this stage. The teachers of 
the public schools of the primary grade are espe- 
cially to be congratulated on this account. They 
have the best and most hopeful places of all. They 
ought to have equal equipment, and equal reward 
in gratitude and in wages. Given these latter in- 
ducements, which will, I suppose, always count 
heavily as inducements, until quite purely celes- 
tial conditions prevail on earth, I should be unable 



190 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

to see why we should not all prefer to teach the 
children, with their comparative moldable char- 
acters and impressible minds rather than the some- 
what literally "hardened youth" of both sexes in 
the colleges and so-called universities of the 
country. 

Of this plastic stage of memory and judgment 
the method of instruction makes account, both by 
taking advantage of the tendency to imitation and 
by furnishing good examples for imitation; by 
storing the plastic memory with facts and object 
lessons; and also by shaping judgment and opin- 
ion through the influence of precepts and constantly 
corrected habits of conduct. Extremes are erron- 
eous and dangerous to all correct method with 
pupils of all ages and in all stages of the educative 
process. Too much show of logic and too great 
failure to appeal to the reasoning faculty; too 
much talk and too strict adherence to the policy of 
silence in order to compel the pupil to find out for 
himself; too great attempt at compulsion and too 
great allowance of so-called liberty, of whatever 
sort; too hard lessons and too much indulgence of 
pupils who are disinclined to lessons of any length 
at all— these, and similar errors on both of the 
opposite sides, are alike inconsistent with the prac- 
tise of the best method. But just where is the line 
that separates the '*too much" from the **too lit- 
tle," the ''too great" from the *Hoo small," in 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 191 

each particTilar case 1 Ah ! this I can not tell you. 
And there is really no source but heaven for the 
answer to this question. And heaven is not going 
to answer all questions of this sort for you or for 
me ; or even for some much more pretentious writer 
on so-called pedagogy. We must all try, and exper- 
iment, and blunder, and learn from our blunders 
— all the time making some progress, while ex- 
pecting never to attain perfection. But after all, 
single mistakes in diagnosis or prescription on our 
part do not kill the patient as similar mistakes of 
the doctor or the druggist may; nor do we often 
need to defend ourselves as did the physician who, 
when he was accused of malpractise, retorted. 
''When I treat a patient for disease of the liver, 
he always dies of disease of the liver.'* 

The right use of means also depends upon the 
specific character of the means available. All 
methods, or ways of using the means of instruction 
may be reduced to three classes. These are The 
Oral Word, The Written Word and The Object 
Lesson. The right method for the teacher employs 
the oral word, or speech, in the function of teach- 
ing from the lowest to the highest stages of the 
pupil's development. At first, the word is simple, 
easily intelligible to thought, although always stim- 
ulating to more thought in order the better to 
grasp its meaning, and arranged in sentences that 
convey instruction by stimulating interest, and mak- 



192 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

ing much use of figures of speech. From this earlier 
stage onward, the oral method follows the order 
of the learner's psychological development, until 
it becomes the elaborate scientific lecture, or the 
searching discussion of the seminar, or the quiz as 
to the results obtained by the laboratory method, 
making use of technical terms and relying on the 
hearer's interest for its instructive force and effect. 
Speech is the way of teaching, par excellence. But 
genuine oral instruction is very different from 
mere talking, and, indeed, from every other form of 
address. Its primary object is not to arouse inter- 
est. It must presuppose interest, that is to be 
aroused beforehand and in some other way. Its 
primary office, and the aim which it should never 
for an instant lose out of mind, is to impart instruc- 
tion — that is, to teach in the most definite meaning 
of the word. There is many a brilliant and inter- 
esting lecturer who fails almost completely of the 
primal purpose of speech as a method of instruction, 
because his hearers have little or no more real 
knowledge of the subject, on account of what their 
teacher has said. On the other hand, setting les- 
sons in text-books and hearing lessons recited is not, 
in itself considered and properly speaking, teach- 
ing at all. After helping a lad of fourteen, who 
was constantly falling behind in the knowledge and 
correct use of English, to get a lesson in grammar, 
and finding that my colleague, learned in philology 



TEE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 193 

and literature could not answer any of the linguistic 
puzzles which the getting of the lesson required, I 
was entirely ready to sympathize with the exasper- 
ated mother who wrote a note to her son's teacher 
asking her if she would not exchange offices, and 
let the mother give out the lessons and the teacher 
do some of the teaching. In all stages of the edu- 
cative process, and with all classes of pupils, the 
use of the oral method makes the largest possible 
demands upon the teacher, for even a moderately 
satisfactory result of either of the three methods to 
which reference has just been made. It is indis- 
pensable, however, and worthy of a lifetime of 
study and of toil, even to master this method 
enough to obtain a fair measure of its inestimably 
valuable results. It is always worth remembering, 
also, that it is chiefly by the use of the oral method 
that the teacher comes into those peculiar personal 
relations with the pupil in which his function as 
teacher chiefly consists. We remember what our 
teachers said to us rather than just what were the 
lessons they gave out to us from the text-books 
which happened to be in use. 

But the completely successful method must also 
employ the written word in accordance with the 
order and the laws of a true psychological devel- 
opment. At first, the lesson given out for reading 
or study is the simple story, the brief description of 
the most obvious characteristics of things, the few 



194 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

and easily understood maxims telling children what 
they ought to do and what not to do, the easily 
intelligible statements of what is true in fact and 
in opinion, and of what is not true. From this 
low beginning the use of the written word ascends 
to the study of the more technical and elaborate 
text-books, or other treatises, upon all the different 
particular sciences, to the reading and critical 
appreciation of the masterpieces of literature, and 
to the reflective perusal of the more profound and 
abstruse works on mathematics and philosophy. 

In this connection I wish to refer again to the 
lamentably low condition of the appetite and diges- 
tion, even among the educated classes, for hard 
reading and prolonged study of thorough and 
solid books. In spite of the increase in quantity 
and excellence of the various forms of ephemeral 
and journalistic literature— if, indeed, it can be 
called ''literature,'' as some of it doubtless may — 
it was never truer than it is today that the best 
learning and worthiest thought of the race are to 
be found only in written records of the type least 
popular at the present time. No one who does not 
make the principal part of his reading consist of 
such books can be a genuine scholar, or be fitted 
to teach in the very best manner any of the partic- 
ular subjects of which these books treat. The evils 
of the too exclusive reading of the other sort of 
books, of the popular and almost universal ex- 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 195 

cessive devotion to the novels of the season, 
the magazines of the month, and to the papers 
of the day, have been so often but so vainly- 
deplored by the champions of good literature and of 
a sound and serviceable education, that I do not 
need to dwell upon the mental and moral evils 
engendered in this way. But there is one aspect 
of the general subject which has a very special 
interest for us as teachers, and an exceedingly 
important, but not at all sufficiently recognized, 
bearing upon our work as teachers. This is the 
character of the text-books which we are required 
or permitted to use. Here, again, the evils con- 
nected with their injudicious, incompetent, or 
bribed selection, have been often, but as yet scarcely 
effectively exposed and denounced. Again, how- 
ever, it is not of evils connected with the way of 
''introducing'' text-books into our pubilc schools 
that I am now going to speak. At present I have, 
the rather, in mind certain indirect and collateral 
evils connected with what, as looked at from a 
certain point of view, may be regarded as an 
entirely worthy endeavor — the endeavor, namely, 
to make the subject attractive and easy for the 
pupil to get as a lesson. I will take the same illus- 
tration which I have already used ; it is the method 
employed by the student of the classical or the 
modern languages to determine the meaning 
of a word in the text he is reading. If 



196 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

he looks up the word in a large general lexi- 
con of the language, selects out of two-score 
other meanings the particular one which he judges 
best to fit the context, fits it in himself so as to 
combine literalness with elegance and grammati- 
cal accuracy, as well as he can in his present stage 
of knowledge, he gets a valuable training in the 
science and art of language — the highest and 
noblest expression of human thought and feeling — 
which he can obtain in no other way. If, on the 
contrary, he just takes the word that some one 
else tells him to take, as set down in a note, vocab- 
ulary, or **pony,'' he gets little or nothing at all 
which is good, but on the contrary an increase to 
his native disinclination to work for his own mental 
living, and an encouragement to habits of idleness 
and shirking. But it is not in the study of the 
languages alone that the too exclusive use of **pre- 
digested food'' has tended to make a race of stu- 
dents that is loath to eat anything which requires 
considerable chewing as the first thing in the pro- 
cess of self-digestion. Is it coming about that reli- 
ance must be placed on the moving-picture show 
rather than on the study of the written word under 
the leadership of inspiring personalities, for the 
mental, moral, and religious education of the com- 
mon people? It has already come about that a 
large, and, it is to be feared, an increasing propor- 
tion of our university and college graduates are 



THE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 197 

turned out utterly incapable of doing *'hard read- 
ing" in the technical meaning which the scholar 
at Oxford or Cambridge or Edinburgh in Great 
Britain attaches to those words. Evidently, then, 
we must find some improved way to cultivate the 
capacity, and enforce the obligation, of the serious 
study of thorough and solid books, if we would re- 
cover the most effective use of the written word as 
a means of instruction rather than of entertainment 
simply. 

In the third place, the teacher's right method 
makes use of the means afforded by the real Object, 
at every stage of the pupil's development. Indeed, 
object-teaching is in certain respects, more nearly 
the universal method than either of the two other 
methods. To see for one's self what the thing is — 
this is the need of every child, and of every 
mature man of science. To bring about this, how- 
ever, it is not necessary— in teaching botany, for 
example— that the school children should be en- 
couraged to exterminate the wild violets, or moun- 
tain laurel, or native rhododendrons, of the entire 
neighborhood. The teacher who knows how can 
give more instruction by showing and explaining 
one specimen, than by lauding a dozen pupils for 
the extraordinary amount of plunder brought in 
at one time from the nearest woods. Nor do I think 
it necessary to rid the whole neighborhood of its 
pet cats— although this is by no means always an 



198 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

undesirable result— in the interests of the depart- 
ment of biology. The skilful dissection of one by 
the teacher may result in a much greater growth 
to an elementary knowledge of anatomy and phy- 
siology than the mangling of a dozen by two or 
three times as many pupils. 

Here again, teaching by example is much to be 
commended. To behold, admire and follow the man 
who is an inspiring example of the skill of the 
artizan, or the artist, or of a morally worthy and 
noble character, is to make use of a most efficient 
means of self -development. The object lesson is a 
specially potent means in control by the teacher who 
wishes for the highest success in the most important 
of his functions, as the shaper of a sound and 
noble character. 

It is especially in view of the importance of a 
study of right method that the value of psychol- 
ogy, or the science of the nature and development of 
man's conscious life, becomes apparent. This fact 
of a fundamental dependence of so-called pedagogy 
upon psychology, can never be reasonably or suc- 
cessfully denied. And why should it not be so, 
according to the principle already announced and 
now repeated: All right method in teaching 
follows the normal psychological method of 
human development? The study of psychology, 
however profound and however prolonged, will 
never of itself guarantee success to the teacher. 



TEE EQUIPMENT OF THE TEACHER 199 

But rightly pursued, it will give him to know 
what he is about; and what he ought to be 
about. Coupled with the observing eye, the 
kindly heart, and the will that is firm in its 
adherence to truth and righteousness, it will make 
what would otherwise be unintelligible and wholly 
opportunist, ripen into a science of method. And if 
this so-called science is not adapted for universal 
communication and use, it will nevertheless be a 
specialist's knowledge of the ways of conducting 
the Self, and of the reasons for those ways, in the 
complicated and difficult personal relations univer- 
sally maintaining themselves between the teacher 
and his pupils. 

After all has been said that can truthfully be 
said about pedagogic method from the alleged 
scientific point of view, it must be confessed that 
the actual practise of the individual teacher can 
never be reduced to exact scientific formulas. No 
one teacher can dogmatically teach any other 
teacher precisely how he or she ought to teach in 
order to reach the best results possible for that 
particular individual under a given, definite set 
of circumstances. Each case is a special case; is 
indeed a special problem. Success in this problem 
depends chiefly upon the cultivated tact of the 
person whose problem it is. Now the thing which 
we call ''Tact'' is a very subtle and complex thing. 
It is less easy to deliver from one person to 



200 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

another, or even to cultivate in one person by the 
aid of another, than knowledge is. Neither knowl- 
edge nor tact can be made, or received, as a gift. 
For its self -acquisition, these exhortations combine 
all that I am prepared to say at present ; although 
the psychology of tact remains one of the most 
promising of all the hitherto unexplored fields of 
psychological investigation. First, then, cultivate 
the person who is to practise the art. Cultivate 
your Self. You can not be any too well cultivated 
for the practise of your profession, whether you are 
teaching in the kindergarten or in the graduate 
school of the great university. Second : Cultivate 
the science that underlies the art. This is the 
science of human nature, with its physical, mental, 
moral, and spiritual capacities and the laws of their 
development. And, finally, observe and experi- 
ment — ^thus finding your own way, to that which is 
for you, the best practise of the difficult and honor- 
able art of teaching. 



Part III 
THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 



201 



LECTURE X 

THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER: 
HIS PUPIL'S WELFARE 

Since the successful teacher is not only a 
"knower,'* a man with a scientific equipment, but 
also a **doer," the practiser of an art, he must, 
like every other true artist, have his helpful and 
inspiring ideals. Indeed, quite as much as in the 
case of any other artist, the highest success of the 
professional teacher is dependent upon the charac- 
ter, at once exalted and reasonable, of the ideals 
which he ardently cherishes and earnestly pursues. 

Now, there has been of late a rather wide-spread- 
ing tendency to regard lightly, if not scornfully, 
the insistence upon rational ideals for the control 
of correct practise. The attempt has even been 
made to remove the practical efforts for the eco- 
nomic and social uplift of all classes from under 
the influence of the ethical ideals which may claim 
the right to suggest and to enforce them. With 
these attempts in general, we have little sympathy. 
But whatever may be said in their favor as re- 
gards their effect upon other classes of workmen, 
they are peculiarly inappropriate when recom- 
mended to the professional teacher. For since it 



204 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

is his business to be a *'knower" as well as a 
**doer," the science of his art includes the knowl- 
edge of the ideals which the practise is trying, 
however imperfectly, to realize. 

It will not be, then, I trust, time altogether mis- 
spent, if we take a few minutes to consider the 
nature of ideals in general, and the relations they 
sustain to enlightened and successful practise. 

An ideal is a construction of thought and imagi- 
nation—a mental picture of what ought to he, but 
is not as yet completely realized. It is always, of 
necessity, constructed upon a basis of fact ; for hu- 
man thought and imagination, in their highest and 
wildest flights, can never rise entirely above influ- 
ences from the soil and atmosphere of earth. And 
ideals not constructed on a basis of experience of 
actual facts, if such could be constructed at all, 
would not be adapted to inspire and guide our ef- 
forts under any sort of earthly conditions. But 
there is no conviction of human nature which is 
more firmly fixed or more influential than the con- 
viction that facts do not conform with those moral 
and aesthetical standards to which man finds him- 
self assigning a value that is something more than 
merely instrumental. And man feels it to be his 
duty and his privilege to strive for a larger and 
yet larger conformity between the ideal and the 
actual. 



TEE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 205 

But every ideal is itself a growth. The more 
we ourselves grow toward our ideals, the farther 
away from us do these same ideals seem to be. This 
is really, however, because they are not precisely the 
same; the ideals themselves have expanded and 
risen higher in the scale of values. Let us not judge 
that following them has turned out like chasing the 
will-o-the-wisp, or trying to come up with the end 
of the rainbow, where the pot of gold lies hidden. 
We have not only been exercised and grown 
stronger in the pursuit, but we have won a portion 
of the fortune which we have found to be far 
greater in amount and value than we had dreamed 
it to be. And this is the very nature of an ideal 
and of man as an idealizing animal. 

Ideals, then, become the sources of aspiration and 
guidance for the more and ever more successful 
realization of our endeavors. But in order to 
serve us in this way, they must neither be too low 
nor too high, in the level at which we keep them. If 
they are kept too low, they do not raise us 
up toward them; but if they are raised too high, 
they are likely to be found unfitted for our guid- 
ance and impracticable, totally, under existing con- 
ditions. Our pursuit of our ideals must, therefore, 
always be tempered by our growing experience. 
Then they stimulate, inspire, and guide us; other- 
wise, they may depress, discourage, and mislead 
us. 



206 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

If now we consider what has been said about the 
functions and the equipment of the teacher, it will 
be apparent that each one of these functions, and 
each item in this equipment, is capable of being 
idealized. This is only to say that by thinking, and 
giving some healthy play to the imagination, we 
may easily form a mental picture of our experience, 
as more nearly perfect than it now actually is. By 
forming such a picture we may stimulate and guide 
ourselves toward a truer and more comprehensive 
success. 

Like every form of craft or art, teaching has, 
of course, aims and ideals that are peculiarly its 
own. In general, the teacher's ideal aim is to 
become a master of his craft. Or if we regard the 
profession of teaching after the analogy of the fine 
arts, we may say that he aims to become an artist 
of merit, because capable of realizing his ideals, in 
some notable manner, in the practise of his art. 
This consideration involves an appreciation of the 
value of his ideal, and a correspondingly high esti- 
mate of the value of his craft or art. To be a good 
and successful teacher must seem worth while, so to 
say, "for its own sake." The teacher can not, 
indeed, be wholly indifferent to salary, or social 
position, or the grateful recognition of his pupils 
and their parents ; but to win these rewards ought 
not to be his sole, or even his chief, design in choos- 
ing his profession. His choice should also be 



TEE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 207 

prompted and fixed by a high estimate of the value 
of his craft. One of the world's greatest teachers 
of the last generation was a certain Japanese, Mr. 
Fukuzawa by name. During his entire life, this 
man preferred to remain a teacher rather than 
accept any of the offers of appointment to what 
are popularly regarded as more honorable places in 
the service of the state. This was because he loved 
his craft and set a high estimate upon the value of 
success in its pursuit. It is a misfortune for the 
teacher not to love to teach, and not to hold high 
ideals of the worth for others of his profession. If 
there were not certain practical obstacles in the 
way, it would almost seem as though the rule 
should be enacted, to employ no teachers— at least, 
in the public schools of the land — who did not love 
to teach. I fear, however, that under such a ruling, 
it would be extremely difficult to keep the public 
schools supplied with teachers at any price which 
the tax-rate would bear. But enthusiasm and 
affection toward the work are surely much more apt 
to be the attitude of the workman in the craft, who 
has a high ideal of what it is possible to accomplish 
by the successful practise of the craft. You will, 
perhaps, remember that Plato described the proper 
attitude of the student of philosophy as '*Eros,*' 
an enthusiastic attachment resembling that of a 
lover toward his mistress. I do not say that this 
** Eros'' ought to be made the indispensable 



208 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

requisite for every candidate to an appointment in 
our profession ; but I am sure that we should obtain 
much better results in our public system of educa- 
tion, if every teacher engaged in it, had toward the 
work this attitude as a matter of fact. 

I now mention the three principal ideals of the 
teacher, to each of which some special consideration 
will then be given in the subsequent lectures of 
this course. They are (1) The Welfare of the 
Pupil; (2) The Advancement and Dissemination of 
Science; (3) The Improvement of Society and of 
the State. It is the more immediate ideal of edu- 
cation to make improved human beings, better men 
and women, out of those who are under process of 
education— in the fullest meaning of the word 
** better.'* But thei present and more remote wel- 
fare of those pupils, and the more comprehensive 
and distant welfare of society and of the state, are 
dependent upon the growth and extension of knowl- 
edge; and, therefore, it is one of the teacher's 
ideals to lend a hand in the advancement and dis- 
semination of science, which is knowledge in its 
most highly developed form. Both these ideals, as 
their wider and more distant reaches are contem- 
plated, are seen to culminate in the strengthening, 
elevating and purifying of society, and in render- 
ing the State stable and at the same time pro- 
gressive. 

During our hour together today, let us attend to 



THE CHIEF IDE ALB OF THE TEACHER 209 

some considerations which may help to define the 
ideal of the teacher as consisting in the welfare of 
his pupils. It is, of course, a worthy cause of sat- 
isfaction to every teacher of the right mind, to see 
his pupils ' ' getting along " or '^ doing well, ' ' as the 
popular sayings run. The motives for this satis- 
faction are various, and of either a higher or a 
lower grade, from the altruistic point of view. 
For example, it is gratifying as a bid for promo- 
tion and increase of salary, or as a proof of pro- 
fessional success, or as an object of professional 
pride. But more honorable than any of these 
reasons is that which finds its motive in the wish of 
the teacher to see the welfare advanced of those 
who have been made by his own choice the objects 
of a special care. This motive is indeed the most 
unselfish of them all. 

There is, however, a larger and more benevolent 
way to regard the matter than any of those which 
take their point of standing with the teacher him- 
self. The welfare of the pupil realizes the highest 
kind of an ideal at which human endeavor can 
aim. For it is a personal ideal. We are accus- 
tomed in this day to personify and idealize 
''Science;" and thus attach to it a very high 
degree of value, as we say, ''for its own sake.'* 
But in all such connections, it is well for us to 
remember the following obvious, but too much 
neglected truths: "Science" can not be personified 



210 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

and thought of as though it were a real and inde- 
pendent good, quite apart from all human interests 
or conscious and sentient life. Science is only 
another name for knowledge, and knowledge can 
not exist otherwise than as an experience of know- 
ing minds. Science is essentially a mental and 
therefore a personal affair. Its good is no good-in- 
itself , so to say ; it is the good possession, or state, 
of conscious human beings or persons. It is, then, 
the knowing person, the conscious life of thought 
and feeling, of power to interpret, and modify, 
and use nature, which gives all the value which its 
devotees sometimes figuratively attribute to so- 
called science. Students and teachers of science, 
therefore, do not understand the full meaning and 
value of their office and their opportunity, who 
regard themselves as enlisted in the interests merely 
of an impersonal something which they are pleased 
to call by the name of SCIENCE. Men are not of 
value, because they work for science; but science 
is of value, because it works for the good of men. 
And now let us come back to the consideration of 
this ideal of the teacher— the welfare of his pupils. 
The pupil is the person at whose good, by way of 
increase of knowledge and building of character, 
the teacher is most directly and efficiently aiming. 
His ideal is to improve that particular person, to 
make it more of a person. The pupil is, so to say, 
raw material which must be worked up into a fine 



THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 211 

and serviceable product. From this point of stand- 
ing, when I hear teachers proclaiming their devo- 
tion to the cause of science, and openly confessing 
or secretly revealing a lack of interest in the per- 
sonal life, whose initiation into the first steps in 
science it is their professional duty to undertake, I 
think, not only how selfish, but also how stupid, is 
this attitude toward the teacher's working ideal. 
Such a workman has mistaken the construct of his 
fancy for the reality whose nature he ought to be 
scientific enough truly to apprehend. 

In order to make clearer, not only the value of 
this ideal, but also the nature and practicability of 
its attainment, I invite your attention for a few 
moments to what is popularly called the ' ' metaphy- 
sics" of the subject. Perhaps I might render what 
I have to expound a little more acceptable, if I 
spoke of it as the psychological doctrine of the per- 
sonal life, when viewed from the modern point of 
view. This point of view, of course, conceives of 
the personal life of the individual man, like every 
other form of life, as a development. But as soon 
as this point of view is taken and consistently 
held, from which to survey the entire subject, 
certain conclusions, which would otherwise seem 
rather startling, appear as matters of course. And, 
first, there is an infinite number of degrees possible 
of the reality of the personal life. The popular 
exhortation, **Be a real man/* like all similar pop- 



212 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

ular exhortations, is far better metaphysics than 
that which is taught by the professors of ethics 
and philosophy in many a university. No one 
can he a person, without becoming a person. And 
every one of us is to be ranked as more or less of a 
person, according as we have in reality developed 
the characteristics of personal life. 

What is true of the reality of personality is true 
of the unity of personality— of what we call ''indi- 
viduality," as applied to human beings. I may 
seem to be using yet stranger and more uncouth 
language, when I assert that no human being can 
be, in the highest meaning of the words, able to 
count as one distinct and alone person, without 
going through a process of ^'unifying'' the personal 
life. I once asked a man who had spent his entire 
life in the most intimate relations with the Chinese, 
if he could reveal to me the characteristics of the 
personality of that most mysterious race. After 
confessing that they were still an unsolved mj^stery 
to him, he went on to say that no Chinese was 
either really so good, or really so bad, as he seemed 
to be. By this he meant that the "clan conscious- 
ness" always colored and dominated the individual 
self-consciousness; that every Chinese was to be 
considered rather as a member of a peculiar race 
than as an individual person or personal unity, so 
to say. And if we will reflect upon the deeper 
meanings of such phrases as **a double-minded 



TEE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 21S 

person," "sl person who does not know Ms own 
mind," "a man of a twofold nature," etc., etc., 
we shall see again how shrewd is the instinctive 
metaphysics of our popular modes of speech. But 
the practical efficiency of any man, as well as the 
reality and dignity of his manhood, depends largely 
upon his ability to escape the evils of a divided 
personality which is so often thwarted and ruined 
by a ceaseless conflict with itself. 

Once more : The development of the truest 
reality and highest unity to the personal life must 
be, in every case, a seZ/-development ; yet it is a 
development in which others may take an important 
part. The teacher's function is to stimulate and 
guide this ' ' self -making ' ' activity toward its appro- 
priate ideal. This ideal is the development of the 
reality and the unity of a person. As I have already 
said, there can be no higher ideal than this before 
the teacher; or indeed, before any one, in his 
relations to his fellow men. From this there fol- 
lows again the same call, already several times 
repeated— namely, the call to realize in one's own 
person, and to express in one's professional work, 
this true estimate of the value of this ideal. We 
all justly honor the man, who by study of its nature, 
and by experimenting with its culture, develops to 
a higher stage of perfection some vegetable, or 
flower, or plant, or species of tree. We give per- 
sonal names to the strawberry, the apple, the pear, 



214 THE TEACHEB'8 PRACTICAL PEILOBOPHY 

and even the head of lettuce or cabbage, which 
some cultivator has made to grow to some peculiar 
shape, or color, or to some increased pitch of gus- 
tatory excellence. But we ourselves are profes- 
sional growers of men and women ; our ambition is 
to develop to a high degree of excellence the quali- 
ties of a real manhood and womanhood. In order 
to realize to any satisfactory extent this ideal of 
personal excellence in his pupils, the teacher must 
show that he actually does put the estimate which 
it deserves upon the character of their personal 
life; and he will show most effectively this esti- 
mate, by evidently striving in his own person to 
realize the same ideal. 

Besides this sentimental and, it must be confessed 
somewhat remote, aspect of what the process of 
education may hope to accomplish as a motive for 
interesting the teacher in the welfare of his pupils, 
there is this fact that, of all the teacher's aims, the 
influencing for their own good, of his pupils, is 
the one which lies nearest at hand, and the one in 
which his efforts are likely to be most immediately 
and obviously effective. The other worthy aims, 
such as we are to consider later, important and 
comprehensive as they are, must almost always be 
looked upon in the light of a rather dim perspec- 
tive ; for they lie far above the present horizon and 
need the eye of faith, or they are far away in the 
distance, and demand the historical sense £Uid the 



TEE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 215 

confidence which an acquaintance with history 
breeds in the ultimate fulfillment of economic, 
sociological, and above all, ethical principles. The 
growth of science, for example, is the care of many 
hundreds or thousands of observers and explorers; 
and its widest distribution will be the product of 
many hundreds of years. It is a large, and far-off, 
and therefore rather vague affair. The same thing 
is true, in even greater degree, of the relation which 
the individual teacher, of average ability and 
opportunity, sustains to the welfare of society at 
large, and to the stability and progress of the insti- 
tutions of the state. But the pupil is ever before 
you. His welfare, physical, mental, moral, is a very 
concrete interest, to which your attention is 
extremely apt to be called at any hour or minute 
of the school day. And when he is absent, either 
on account of illness or of truancy, and when he 
has an examination, in the successful passing of 
which your professional reputation may be in- 
volved, you can not readily avoid some increase 
of interest, selfishly if not benevolently motived 
and inclined. Multiplying this one individual by 
one or more tens, you have a group of human 
beings, the promotion of whose welfare by assisting 
in their education, becomes almost of necessity, a 
very near and concrete interest. Not infrequently, 
they are right before you— these thirty to fifty, or 
more, living, potential men and women, to con- 



216 THE TEAOHER'8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

tribute to the higher welfare of whom is your bus- 
iness, your calling, your duty. Thus, the aiming 
at their welfare, however, unconsciously or inter- 
mittently, becomes like the aim of the cook to make 
good bread, or of the manufacturer to turn out a 
fair and marketable product ; or, better still, of the 
artist who works in wood, or clay, or colors, or 
tones, not merely to do "pot-boiling" work, but 
in some measure to approach the realization of his 
cherished ideals. 

But in this connection, it is even more important 
to insist upon the truth that the realization of the 
other ideals, of a more strictly scientific or more 
broadly social order, must be attained by the 
teacher largely, or even chiefly, through the work 
of promoting the welfare of his pupils. At this 
point I should like to utter a strong protest — and 
not only to utter, but to expound and defend at 
length, a protest against the prevalent modern 
fallacy of personifying and deifying Society, and 
the Social, as spelled large with a capital "S." 
It is the Individual who is the only reality; and, 
in the long run, the only effective way to get a 
better state of society is to make better— more 
intelligent, more moral, more practically effective 
— one hy one, the individuals who constitute 
society. No matter what is the nature of the gov- 
ernment, or the constitution of society, it always 
has been the case, and it always will be the cast, 



THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 217 

that the good few individuals have, by making 
others their disciples in the truths of reason and 
in the practise of righteousness, contributed to the 
welfare of society. What is chiefly needed in the 
country at the present time is a small body of 
thoroughly good and really great men, who have 
the courage, the intelligence, the endurance and 
the spirit of self-sacrifice necessary to lead the 
multitude in the political, moral and social reforms, 
which alone can save the nation from finally meet- 
ing the fate to which other nations have succumbed 
in the past. Any system of education which dis- 
courages or weakens the cultivation of a distinct 
and strong personality in those who have the inher- 
ited characteristics that may, under judicious cul- 
tivation, develop into such a personality, is not the 
best fitted to meet the needs of our day. Real 
leaders are needed in Church and State, as never 
before. Prophetic voices were, perhaps, never more 
muffled or sparsely distributed, in all our national 
history hitherto. The great combinations, the 
trust, the union, the party, the society, is in danger 
of, not only undermining or overwhelming the indi- 
vidual member, but even of crushing out all individ- 
ual initiative and independent procedure. 

This state of things, with its existing and its 
threatening evils, does not constitute for the 
teacher a cause for discouragement, but the rather 
an opportunity for improvement. He has the chance 



218 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

to deal with individuals, in a selective way, and at 
the age — as has already been said — ^when they are 
most susceptible to rescue from the dominance of 
class and social influences. The teacher of the 
smallest district school in the country, or of the 
most despised ward school in the city — it is pos- 
sible — ^may be the chief molding influence of some 
one boy or girl who will in the future be a power 
for good or evil to thousands of others. 

The ideal of the teacher v/hich has regard to the 
welfare of the individual pupil is not only the most 
immediate, but it is also the most practicable, or 
likely of realization, of all his aims. Really to do 
much for the extension of science, or to exert any 
perceptible influence over society or the state, in 
the large, may seem impossible for the average 
teacher. Even for scholars of the front ranks, 
there come, not infrequently, almost tragic dis- 
appointments of long-cherished hopes of this sort; 
as, for example, in the case of the astronomer, who 
spent his entire life in making a map of the heav- 
ens, and finished his work just as modern photog- 
raphy became able to accomplish the same thing 
much better in far less time ; or that other scholar, 
who worked for years on a commentary on one of 
the books of the Bible, but just before his work 
was completed, received a book from Germany 
which had gone over the same ground with equal 
thoroness and greater speed. But our aim to 



TEE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 219 

help our pupils to at least a somewhat better and 
richer life, can scarcely be rendered impracticable 
in the same utterly uncontrollable ways. There 
are, indeed, many strong counteracting influences, 
which restrict, or even seem to defeat for the time 
being, this aim of ours; but it still remains prac- 
ticable, and promising of some measure of final 
success. 

This encouraging conviction is certainly well 
founded for the body of pupils who come under 
the teacher's care. The average of interest, of 
promise, and of distinguishable results, may be, 
and probably is, rather low, perhaps discouragingly 
low; some of the pupils, perhaps a considerable 
number, seem well-nigh hopeless subjects of solic- 
itude and care. But after all, the average man 
is the element in the social whole, by improvement 
and education of which social progress is well and 
solidly made. Rightly regarded, he is almost 
always a hopeful subject of instruction and disci- 
pline. Nothing very great, or ideally good, can 
probably be made of him; but his education, if 
ethically effective in any measure, and if it attains 
the supreme end of education in the forming of 
character, can not fail to improve him somewhat. 
On the other hand, they are few, if there be any 
such, who are altogether and permanently hopeless 
subjects of the educative process. 

The teacher's greater reward comes, however, in 



220 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the progress and future influence for good of the 
select few among his pupils. There are presumably- 
some among them — perhaps, two or three — ^who will 
perpetuate his own best influence and go, it may 
be, far beyond him in the realization of all the 
ideals which it is the aim of the educatiye process 
to secure. Whether this rarely good fortune hap- 
pens with any one of us, or not, is likely to depend 
much upon whether we are constantly on the look- 
out for it, always in a state of eager expectancy to 
secure so fine and rewarding a result. 

There is one caution which I wish to make and 
emphasize, before we part with the theme of this 
lecture. "What has been said already will, per- 
haps, have made the impression that I regard it as 
the privilege and the duty of the teacher to make 
himself the efficient and faithful servant of those 
who are given him to teach. Properly understood, 
the impression is true. But this attitude of interest 
in the welfare of the pupil and of desire to serve 
in the promotion of this ideal, must never bo so 
assumed as to compromise the teacher's dignity. 
The teacher must never become the tool, either of 
the power that employs him, or of any other educa- 
tional agency; or in the pupil's estimate. There 
are many and strong influences at work in this 
country at the present time, which tend to degrade 
the professional teacher to the position of some- 
body's ''tool." Too much of the idea of the Board 



THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 221 

of Trustees as dispensers of coveted positions, of 
The President as a sort of *'boss," of the teachers 
as hirelings, and of the institution as something to 
be run on the ' ' cotton mill plan, ' ' has invaded most 
of our colleges and universities. There is also, I 
fear, more or less of the same spirit and its cor- 
responding practise to be found in certain parts 
of our public school system. And that large num- 
bers of the students in all classes of educational 
institutions, and in all stages of the educational 
process, have come to look on all that is done for 
them with an attitude almost totally devoid of 
gratitude and of reverence, there can be no manner 
of doubt. The average college man may seem to 
think that he is doing the favor to both the insti- 
tution and to the teacher, if he condescends to 
patronize either. Much of this seeming is due to 
the conditions which prevail in the country at 
large; much is also due to certain evils still exist- 
ing in the system of education itself. But the 
teacher who, while he remains eager and willing 
to serve, retains a just estimate of his own personal 
worth and of the dignity of his profession, will 
never allow himself to be treated as the ^'tool" of 
another. Be it the son of some rich man, or of 
some member of the School Board, or of the Super- 
intendent, or of the benefactor of the college, it is 
all the same with him. He is interested in them 
all — in their real welfare. But he will be coura- 



222 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

geous, and just and firm ; he will not truckle or dis- 
semble ; for he knows that he can contribute to the 
highest and lasting welfare of all concerned, only 
by showing forth those moral ideals in his own 
character, which it is his ideal aim to promote in his 
pupils as well. 



f\ 



LECTURE XI 

THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER: 
THE CAUSE OF SCIENCE 

In these days an increasing number of men have 
been moved by the fascination of a certain Idea; 
and under the influence of this fascination they 
have devoted themselves to a sort of passionate and 
self-denying service. This idea is represented by 
the word "Science." To make more clear what is 
the attitude of some of these minds toward the 
object of their devotion, I might very properly 
again refer to the figure of speech which Plato used 
in order to show how, as he thought, the philoso- 
pher should dispose himself toward so-called 
** divine philosophy." His soul should be aflame 
with '* Eros "—the passion of love as the lover 
feels it in the presence of his mistress. To such 
an one, the possession of the loved one seems, of 
all imaginable sources of happiness, the most desir- 
able and worthy of endeavor. In somewhat the 
same way does the "scientist," or man who claims 
to love and pursue science for its own sake, claim 
to feel toward his special form of science. You 
can see, then, that the ancient and the modern ideal, 
and the spirit of the old-time philosopher and that 
of the new-time scientist, are very similar. 

223 



224 TEE TEACHER'S PBAGTIGAL PHILOSOPHY 

Now I can not hope to awaKen in all of you this 
attitude of love and devotion toward any particular 
form of human knowledge, or toward the progress 
of knowledge "for its own sake," in the human 
race in general. And to tell the truth, I do not by 
any means wholly approve of this attitude, either in 
itself considered or in the practical outcome which 
is its result. But there is something very noble 
about the spirit itself; and many of its results are 
most worthy of our sincerest admiration. So true 
is this, that I doubt whether any teacher can do the 
best kind of professional work who does not have a 
share in this spirit and its work. To advance and 
disseminate science is one of the legitimate ideals 
of the teacher, no matter how humble and obscure 
may be the position which he or she is compelled to 
fill. All this, however, ought to be encouraged by 
the institutions and the system of education which 
employs the teachers, and recognized and cultiva- 
ted by the teachers themselves, in an intelligent and 
reasonable way. 

It will, then, be well worth our while to spend 
some time in defining more clearly the nature and 
the value for human interests of the form of knowl- 
edge which is called *' science," in order that we 
may the better understand the relation in which 
its advancement and dissemination stand to the 
legitimate work of the professional teacher. In 
attempting to do this we must use the term, and 



TEt! CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 225 

form the corresponding conception, m a broad and 
genial way. The attempt to give a sort of high 
and holy, mystical significance to the word 
*' science, '' and then to usurp its exclusive use for a 
certain limited circle of man's cognitive acquisi- 
tions, has resulted in no small amount of mischief. 
It has made a few men priggish and knowledge- 
proud— a condition of spirit which is the very 
opposite of the humility and self-effacement which 
characterize the best examples of the truly scien- 
tific spirit. It has also operated powerfully to 
produce a lack of sympathy and cooperation 
among the different branches of human knowl- 
edge. I once knew a professor of physics in a 
small college, who used to insist that he was the 
only truly scientific man in the entire institution. 
But he was not himself anything very great; and 
naturally, he had insuperable difficulty in per- 
suading the professors of chemistry, biology, and 
even of history, and of languages, that his claim 
was anything more than a disagreeable pleasantry. 
Any group or series of experiences, whether with 
things or with minds, which admits of accurate 
observation, of classification, and of the discovery 
of any uniform sequences or connections among the 
experiences— its so-called laws— may become the 
subject of one of the particular, or positive, sciences, 
so-called. The degree of accuracy of observation 
may vary greatly according to the intrinsic nature 



226 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

of the phenomena, and the method necessary to be 
employed, or the stage reached in the development 
of its peculiar technique. The principles of class- 
ification may differ widely; and the body of 
derived laws may be either, relatively to some other 
science, very large, or relatively very small. And 
in all the sciences, both principles of classification 
and derived laws are subject to almost incessant 
change. Otherwise, the particular science could 
not be a growing thing; and the moment any 
body of scientific truth ceases to change and to 
grow, it ceases to compete for attention and for 
devotion from the minds interested in the progress 
of truth. 

Understood in this way, the value of every science 
consists in the contribution which it is able to 
make to the welfare of man. I have already shown 
that to speak of the value of science *'for its own 
sake," either involves us in a fallacy, or else is a 
convenient but figurative way of looking at its 
real good. The essential nature of science, which 
is only a certain way of knowing, makes it a mental 
good. But this is not to say that the entire value, 
or even the chief value and charm of science, for 
its devotees, is that it is only a means to some other 
kind of good. All human science, indeed, originated 
in the desire to know— at first, and chiefly — ^how to 
behave so as to escape the evil which our environ- 



TEE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 227 

ment constantly threatens, and to secure the good 
which it can bestow. 

The modern tendency, in so far as it is due 
largely to a rather base spirit of commercialism, is 
in the direction of depreciating all kinds of knowl- 
edge that are not of the so-called * ' practical kind. ' ' 
Science that builds and navigates ships, discovers 
and reduces ores, or increases the returns of agri- 
culture, improves the chemistry of iron and textile 
products, investigates and teaches the causes, the 
prevention, and the cure of diseases, makes a just 
appeal to those whom such knowledge has made 
wealthy or more healthy, when presented from this 
practical point of view. And I suppose that it is 
largely as a protest to the exclusiveness of this 
point of view, and from a sort of secret feeling that 
those who are profited in these ways would gladly 
control and exploit the scientists, that so many of 
the latter are ready to stand up and defend the 
value of science for its own sake. And they, too, 
have a certain very important truth on their side. 
For science is a good-in-itself and quite irrespective 
of any use which may be made of it as a means to 
secure any other kind of good. Truth is reason's 
form of good. The possession of science, and the 
loving desire to possess more of it, is reason's right 
and proper attitude toward external nature and 
toward itself. Seizing upon, and holding on to, 
the truth is just what rational beings ought to he 



228 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHT 

engaged in doing. Moreover, it is a sort of noble 
happiness, however much of pain and labor it may 
cost, to pursue and overtake the truth. To gain and 
to enjoy the science is the mind's good—its stimulus 
and its food. 

Still further, the growth of science in the indi- 
vidual mind and in the race is inseparably con- 
nected with the improved character of the individ- 
ual and of society. It is true that one man, or a 
community of men, may be distinguished for a 
high grade of attainments in science, and not be 
correspondingly advanced in moral, esthetical, and 
religious character. But always in estimating such 
a condition, we should keep in mind the following, 
too much neglected facts, of great importance from 
the teacher's point of view. 

First : The pursuit and attainment of any con- 
siderable amount of science is almost inseparably 
connected with the culture of some of the most 
fundamental virtues— such are the virtues of indus- 
try, courage, patience, etc. ; and many of the baser 
and more degrading vices and indulgences are 
scarcely compatible with a life seriously devoted to 
scientific pursuits. But, second, certain forms of 
science can not be pursued at all without a strong 
tendency to ennoble the character of the individual 
and of society. Such are the sciences that deal 
more directly with questions of a psychological 
and moral nature; such also is philosophy, espe- 



THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 229 

cially in its branches of the philosophy of conduct, 
art, and religion. Those of the physical and natural 
sciences, which constantly fix the attention on the 
mysteriously vast, or the equally mysterious minute 
things of nature, in the case of a mind already 
inclined to be serious, tend to confirm the inclina- 
tion and thus to ennoble the character. It is a 
somewhat extreme, but after all significant, way 
of stating this truth, to declare: "The undevout 
astronomer is mad/' All that has thus far been 
said is much more true than is ordinarily supposed, 
of every form of science, with regard to its intrin- 
sic value as an essential factor in the ideal of human 
welfare. 

This general estimate of the value of the aim 
which invites the teacher's enthusiastic devotion, as 
the person to whom the advancement and the dis- 
semination of science is committed in a special way, 
may be still further enhanced by the more practi- 
cal values of some of the particular sciences. These 
are exceedingly varied and extend to every depart- 
ment of human life. I have, perhaps, already suffi- 
ciently commended from this point of view those 
branches of physical science which are making such 
constant and enormous contributions to the mate- 
rial welfare of mankind. Those researches of men 
learned in the mysteries of modern chemistry, which 
have, for example, resulted in the use of anilin dyes 
in all manner of textile fabrics, or of the physicists 



230 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

wlio have applied the energy of steam or electricity 
to the development of transportation facilities, or of 
the biologists and botanists who have discovered or 
improved new species of grains and fruits, have 
contributed beyond all calculation to the increase 
of human welfare. In general, these men have 
reaped very little material benefit from the contri- 
butions they have made. Some of them have toiled 
on and died in poverty and obscurity, obliged to 
the last to be satisfied with the rewards of the 
pursuit of science ''for its own sake." It has been, 
and still is, chiefly by their initiative and self- 
denying efforts that ships sail speedily and safely 
over all seas, that steam cars cross the continent 
and electric trams connect the villages and towns, 
that great manufacturing and mining operations 
are made possible and profitable, and that better 
housing and food are available, where inordinate 
greed does not interfere, for the multitudes of the 
common people. But so twisted has our eye-sight 
become, and so blinded our judgment, that we can 
see and admire only the great capitalist, or finan- 
cier so-called, whose office too often is, to capture 
and appropriate to himself far the greater share 
of the material benefits of the extension of this class 
of the particular sciences. In my opinion, there is 
nothing meaner than the attitude of a considerable 
proportion of such commercial classes toward the 
discoverers and disseminators of science. 



TEE CHIEF IDEALS OF TEE TEACEER 231 

But the evil tendencies and results of the more 
sordid way of looking upon the particular sciences, 
and upon the men who are devoting their lives to 
their pursuit, are not confined to the commercial 
classes. And, indeed, to some of these classes the 
cause of science owes an inestimable debt. It is 
when this spirit invades the men of science them- 
selves, and they come to regard their work in science 
as chiefly valuable for what of material profit it 
will yield to themselves, when the scholars and edu- 
cationalists come to be **on the make," rather than 
unselfishly devoted to their own ideals, that the 
country has most to fear from the spread of the 
spirit of commercialism over the educational system 
of the country. To avoid this calamity, it would 
be better to go a long way backward toward the 
ancient Chinese system— theoretical Confucianism, 
at least— of arranging the social classes. This, you 
will doubtless remember, placed the scholar at the 
head, and the money-getter at the foot, of the 
social classes. 

Without further apology for this lengthy excur- 
sus into somewhat debatable regions of a disagree- 
ably critical sort, because of the sore need of such 
criticism, let us now return to the consideration of 
the value of other particular sciences, as constitu- 
ting worthy ideals for the professional teacher. 
Among them stand those sciences which contribute 
to the improved health of mankind, because they are 



232 TEE TEACEER'S PRACTICAL PEIL080PEY 

occupied with the diagnosis of disease, with the 
discovery of the causes and cure of disease, and 
with the prevention of disease by the improvement 
of all sorts of sanitation. In this kind of promotion 
of the public welfare, thousands of devoted men and 
women are risking and sacrificing their health and 
their lives. It is the duty and the privilege of all 
of us who belong to the teaching profession, to 
encourage and to bear our full share of the burden 
of this noble work. In order to do this, it is not 
necessary to become professors in a medical school, 
or even teachers of physiology and hygiene in some 
grade of the public schools. We can all take an 
interest in the physical welfare of our pupils. "We 
can be examples of cleanly and sanitary ways of 
living. We can use our political and social influ- 
ence to expose and to suppress the many ways in 
which the greed of corporations and of individuals 
is weakening and depressing and destroying the 
physical and mental sanity of countless thousands 
of the people. But above all, and whatever may be 
our theological and philosophical views as to the 
origin of evil, and whether we have any views at 
all, or not, on that dark, mysterious subject, we 
can recognize for ourselves, and in many appropri- 
ate ways point out to others, what a vast proportion 
of these physical evils is the result of ignorance 
and moral obliquity. You know better than I can 
tell you, how much of open or concealed immorality 



TEE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEAUHER 233 

prevails among tlie children and youth under your 
care. And I call your attention to the underlying 
truth which is assumed in every thing I have to 
say: Teaching is a species of conduct, involving 
peculiarly close relations hetween two classes of 
persons; and all conduct is of necessity a moral 
affair. 

Once more I refer to those of the particular 
sciences which most obviously, and sometimes most 
boastfully, aim at making large contributions to 
the increased happiness and improved moral con- 
dition of mankind. This is especially true of the 
sciences of psychology and ethics, with their appli- 
cation to education, of economics and sociology, of 
ethnology and history. It is neither logical nor 
easy to teach these sciences, or to make anything 
more than the most superficial study of them, 
without having pointed out some of the important 
moral lessons which they seem to inculcate. For 
they all pass in review the conduct of human beings, 
and this is the very true sphere of moral princi- 
ples and of their reasonable and effectual appli- 
cation. With the grander outlook on the history 
of the race, and with the increased knowledge of 
all those aspects of its history which it is the bus- 
iness of these sciences to explore in detail, that 
have resulted from the modem theory of evolution, 
their lessons regarding right ways of human con- 



234 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

duct have become more trustworthy and more 
profound. 

All the worthiest characteristics of the particu- 
lar sciences as looked at from the point of view of 
the teacher who is an enthusiastic idealist, culmi- 
nate in those scientific pursuits which especially 
encourage and cultivate the spirit of sobriety, 
reverence, and devotion toward mankind and 
toward God. The greater men in all the particular 
sciences have, as a rule, possessed and duly exhibi- 
ted this spirit in their work. They have regarded 
themselves as obligated to the service of mankind. 
They have had something of those convictions which 
led Plato to form the conception of God as **the 
great geometer." They have felt over their most 
notable discoveries somewhat as Kepler is reputed 
to have felt when, on his discovery of the laws of 
planetary motion, he affirmed: *'I read thy 
thoughts after thee, God ! ' * And as those of you 
know who happen to have looked over the latter 
part of the great work of one of the most notable 
of the world's men of science in all time— I refer 
to the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton— he closes 
with words that are a veritable sermon on the rea- 
sons that lie in nature for the adoration and worship 
of the Supreme Ruler of nature. Thus the man of 
science passes beyond the more legitimate bounda- 
ries of his own particular science, in order to get 
some of the benefits which are especially allotted to 



THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 235 

the study of ethics, of esthetics, and of religion. 

On the supposition that we are all more than 
sufficiently convinced of the value to the individual 
and to society of scientific culture and attainments, 
at any rate so far as our own pet science is con- 
cerned, let us now consider some of the practical 
ways in which the professional teacher may hope 
to realize his ideal as a promoter and disseminator 
of scientific interests. For I can readily appre- 
ciate the feeling which I am sure all of you have 
had in some degree, and some of you in a high 
degree— namely, that what has thus far been said in 
praise of science is somewhat above the level, or 
beyond the range, of the average, over-burdened 
and not very enthusiastic, teacher. 

We may make a good beginning, however, in the 
effort to lift up our courage by remembering that 
there is an indisputable encouraging fact connected 
with the history of the progress of modern science. 
The fact is this: Science owes its advances chiefly 
to teachers as a class. We may have little or no 
reason for pride on account of any notable contri- 
butions to growth of knowledge, which we may 
ourselves have made ; although, if we have been at 
all faithful teachers, we can scarcely have failed 
to have contributed something to the increased dis- 
semination of science. But we may cherish a rea- 
sonable amount of pride at belonging to a profession 
which has been the chief among all professions in 



236 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY^ 

increasing this kind of valuable assets for the 
benefit of the race. With comparatively few excep- 
tions, the forward steps in every form of human 
knowledge have been taken by men who were 
teachers. And the dissemination of science is 
teaching ; and so this side of the ideal of education 
is the teacher's peculiar function. 

It is not uncommon nowadays, to think that his 
teaching is prejudicial to the work of the discoverer 
of scientific truth. Undoubtedly, the excessive 
burden of what is called drudgery that is laid 
upon the greater number of the teachers of the 
land, prevents their doing much so-called '* origi- 
nal" work. And in consequence, there has arisen 
a more or less determined call to have this burden 
diminished. Some theorists in matters of educa- 
tion are advocating that it should be wholly re- 
moved from those members of the teaching force, in 
our higher institutions of learning, who succeed in 
commending themselves to the appointing power, 
or to the chief executive officer, as capable of doing 
original work. Yet the fact remains — account for 
it as we may — that the two desirable things, the 
work of teaching and the work of advancing science, 
are in general most indebted to the same persons. 
It is, not only in itself, an interesting problem, but 
it may throw some additional light on the func- 
tions, equipment, and ideals of the professional 
teacher, if we consider the possible reasons for this 



TEE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 237 

undoubted historical fact. Of these reasons, prob- 
ably the most obvious is this : The teacher 's life is 
usually spent in the daily work of learning and of 
clarifying knowledge by trying to tell what is 
already known. There are many men engaged in 
business, or in the learned professions, who are 
not by profession teachers, but who have a sincere 
interest in some form of science — either that most 
closely allied with their own business and profes- 
sional interests, or that for which their natural 
tastes and early training has best fitted them. And 
from time to time such men are making more or 
less important contributions to literature or to 
some one of the particular sciences. But the dif- 
ficulties which this class of the promoters of human 
knowledge meet are very great; indeed they are 
customarily deterrent from even making the 
attempt at any work of special study and writing. 
On the contrary, the very pursuit of the practising 
teacher, more than that of the practising lawyer, 
or the practising physician, and much more than 
that of the man engaged in business, pledges and 
compels him to incessant study after the new things 
of science, and after the better ways of imparting 
the knowledge of these new things to other persons. 
Besides this, the teacher, unless he is situated in a 
very lonely and isolated position, dwells in an 
atmosphere where all who breathe it have some- 



238 THE TEACHEB'8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

thing of the work of promoting and disseminating 
knowledge set before them as a daily task. 

And now I am going to mention another form 
of stimulus which is pretty freely administered to 
us who have chosen the life-work of teaching, but 
which is customarily supposed to act as a depres- 
sant rather than as a stimulant. I refer to the 
enforced life of poverty which belongs to the 
teachers as a class. On the whole, as it seems to 
me, we are kept just about poor enough to favor 
our doing the best work in behalf of the promotion 
and dissemination of science, as a professional 
ideal. Please notice, I have placed some emphasis 
on the qualification, "as a professional ideal." I 
am not opposed to an urgent request, and even a 
persistent demand, on the part of the teachers in 
the public schools and in the colleges and univer- 
sities of the country, for an increase in their sal- 
aries. Having spent more than a quarter of a 
century in the service of a wealthy institution, 
during which my expenses doubled, while my sal- 
ary was increased by the munificent sum of two- 
hundred and fifty dollars, I know of my own expe- 
rience how the case stands with the underpaid class 
to whom the country has committed the most 
important of its economic, political, and social 
interests. But on the other hand, I think I have 
noticed that the younger race of teachers, men and 
women, everywhere and in institutions high and 



THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 239 

low in their educational grade, are much more ' ' on 
the make" than were their forebears of a generation 
or two ago; but I have not noticed that they are 
accomplishing any more for the thorough educa- 
tion of their pupils or for the advancement of 
scientific ideals or scientific discoveries. And it 
is common enough talk that for one of them to 
have the good luck to marry a rich wife is ex- 
tremely likely to hinder or to spoil his career as a 
teacher and a man of science. Why not admit, 
then, that the moderate compensation which 
effectually removes the seductions of wealth and 
the increased burden of social and profitless out- 
side engagements, if, with good sense and strict 
economy in its disposal, it also removes the anx- 
ieties of excessive poverty, is on the whole the most 
favorable condition for the profession of the 
teacher ? 

For the reason of its relatively poor financial 
reward, as well as for other reasons, on which I 
need not stop to dwell, many of our teachers of the 
higher grade would not be teachers at all, were it 
not for the fact that their interest has become 
strongly enlisted in the cause of learning and 
science— in a word, in the cause of education for 
themselves and for others. And where this interest 
becomes a sort of fascination, as not infrequently 
happens, we have the conditions fulfilled for the 
most successful professional work. For this is a 



240 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

kind of interest which is apt to grow by feeding 
on itself; and the person who once firmly fixes 
before his mind the acquiring, advancing, and dis- 
tribution, of the benefits of knowledge, is not likely 
ever again to let this ideal fade wholly out of his 
sight. 

To a certain amount of native ambition and at 
least a small measure of original fitness, we must 
assume that the preparation of the teacher for his 
work of teaching keeps him for a considerable 
period of years in the acquisitive and inquiring 
state of mind. This is certainly coming to be more 
and more the case, with the elaboration of our 
system of education, in this country and at the 
present time. Thus do all the influences in the 
history and the environment of even the teacher of 
average attainments contribute to the opportunity 
—and, indeed, almost enforce the necessity— for 
estimating highly the value of science and for 
reflecting upon and serving in practical ways, its 
many-sided interests. At any rate, from the days 
when Plato and Aristotle taught their pupils under 
the groves and in the halls of ancient Athens, to 
the days when Lord Kelvin and Hemholtz lec- 
tured and demonstrated in the lecture-rooms of 
Great Britain and Germany, the teachers of the 
world have been the chief promoters of its science. 
And this statement is justified by thousands of 
much obscurer names than theirs. 



THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 241 

As to so-called original research, or the discovery 
of altogether new facts and principles of science, it 
is, of course, quite beyond the power or the prov- 
ince of most teachers to attempt anything consider- 
able of this sort. To make the claim, or even the 
attempt, would for most of us result in either 
self-deception or failure. But I assure you, there is 
more shamming and pretense about this matter of 
''original research" than about almost any of the 
other phrases so glibly and so unintelli gently used 
by many advocates of the wholly new in our sys- 
tem of education. The eagerness to publish new 
discoveries and have them attached to one's name 
has greatly outstripped the ability to have any- 
thing, new or old, at all worth the publishing. 
And the multiplying of trashy magazine articles 
and doctor's theses, which appear under the spe- 
cious claim to contain something both original and 
important, is appalling. 

And yet it can not be said that it is beyond the 
pale of possibility for any teacher, however, hum- 
ble, to contribute something valuable and new to 
the world's stock of knowledge. My advice to any 
one properly ambitious in this direction is: ''Do 
not look too far away; what you are seeking is 
perhaps near at hand, in your very neighborhood, 
or at least not far away. ' ' There may be some new 
species of flower in the woods or fields where you 
can take your daily or weekly walk. Some one of 



242 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the million or more of the, as yet, unindentified 
species of insects may be working in the ground 
or trees and shrubs of the same fields and woods; 
and working either for or against the interests of 
man. Or if such matters as these do not interest 
you, remember that all the science in the world 
knows only a little of what there is to know about 
the habits of the birds and the bees, and all manner 
of living things. Or, again, to pass into a quite 
different region, the town, the village, the more 
sparsely settled community where you are living, 
has a history that is an integral part, and may 
easily become a very important part, of a m^uch 
wider historical interest. Learn something about 
it; and if your findings seem worth while, make 
them known in a modest and truthful way. And 
occasionally, there will be a common-school teacher 
—although heaven makes such talents a rare gift— 
who can tell the story of the life and the environ- 
ment of her pupils, and of her success with them, 
in a manner to command an enlightened and ten- 
der public sympathy, as recently did one of the 
teachers, now, alas, no longer living, in a public 
school in lower East Side, New York City. 

It is as increasing the possibility of doing some- 
thing of this sort that I urge again upon every 
teacher the benefit of having some special interest 
—or, if you please, *'fad" — in some line of science. 

But even if no opportunity seems at any time 



THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 243 

possible, for doing anything to contribute to the 
world's stock of useful knowledge, there is for 
every one of us a very good likelihood that some 
of our pupils will be stimulated by us, who will be 
far more than we can ever hope to be, really effec- 
tive promoters of the ideal of science. And, on 
the other hand, who teaches anything at all, is sure 
to be, day by day, and hour by hour, a disseminator 
of science. The teachers of a nation are the dis- 
tributors of the world's knowledge broadcast. This 
is a kind of seed, some of which can not fail to 
grow. A full century of the race's experience of 
toil and bloodshed may be disseminated in the les- 
son of a single hour. 



LECTURE XII 

THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER: 
THE PUBLIC WELFARE 

I have already indicated many ways in which 
the work of the teacher is related to the public 
welfare; and I shall have occasion to speak more 
in detail on this subject in subsequent lectures. 
But I wish at the present time to say a few words 
regarding the obligation and the opportunity of all 
who are engaged in the profession of teaching to 
accept, and consciously hold before their minds, the 
general good as one of their cherished ideals. For 
the intelligent and aspiring teacher, although his 
most intimate daily task and aim are directed to- 
ward the welfare of some particular school, is en- 
titled to expand the conception of the relations 
which his work, and that of his colleagues, sustains 
to the community at large. Indeed, something of 
this sort is necessary with every one of us, if we 
are to view our influence in that large-minded and 
contented way, which makes the life of the hum- 
blest workman a happier and a nobler affair. 

I invite you, then, first of all, to try to estimate 
in an adequate manner the obligation of this form 
of the teacher's professional ideals. The grounds 

244 



TEE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 245 

of such an obligation belong to the very nature of 
man as existing in society. Speaking broadly we 
may say that every human being, by virtue of his 
being human at all, becomes a member of the social 
whole. Indeed, it is now an accepted psychological 
truth that the most important characteristics of 
humanity can develop only in society. Alone, the 
human animal can not grow into the mental and 
moral stature of a truly human being, a man, in 
the fullest meaning of the word. This general 
truth might be illustrated in great detail by show- 
ing how it is, as a matter of fact, that the indi- 
vidual comes into the possession of speech, of a 
knowledge of nature as man knows it, and of moral 
ideas and the semblance, at least, of a regard for 
moral considerations in his intercourse with laia 
fellows of the same species. It is true that we must 
look to the development of human reason as the 
source of the allied development of human lan- 
guage. And given a group of human beings, who 
were so situated as to be from the first deprived 
of any ancestral inheritance in the way of a trans- 
mitted language, they would proceed to develop 
one adapted to the uses of the simpler forms of 
communication of their wants and of social inter- 
course. But it is also true that any considerable 
development of the individual is dependent on his 
being early put into the possession of an ancestral 
inheritance of a language already developed; and 



246 THE TEACHER' 8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 



on his being compelled to make use of this means 
prepared for him, in order to make his wants 
known and to make his influence felt. The indi- 
vidual left to himself for the use of merely natural 
signs would scarcely manage to become a man; a 
"man among men" he could not become at all. 

Somewhat the same things must be said about the 
indispensable character of the knowledge which 
every individual inherits to some extent, and the 
existence of which is due to the accumulated ex- 
perience of the race. We pride ourselves upon be- 
ing mentally brighter, or more intellectual, than 
were our own savage ancestors; or, especially, as 
being much more highly developed than are those 
races which seem to us to lie closer to the so-called 
primitive man. But there is grave reason to doubt 
whether by far the greater part of this assumed su- 
periority is not an expression of the simple fact 
that we get by no work of our own what the race 
before us has toiled for centuries to secure. Every 
teacher is telling to boys and girls of scanty intel- 
lectual interest and low grade of intellectual at- 
tainments, scores of truths about the nature and 
manner of the behavior of things which Aristotle 
and Galileo, and even Newton, did not know. 

As to morality, it is so essentially a social af- 
fair that we can not apply any of its terms to hu- 
man beings conceived of as existing outside of 
human society. We can not speak of a person a3 



TEE CEIEF IDEALS OF TEE TEACEER 247 

moral or immoral, but only as non-moral, or not a 
true person at all, when thought of as an indi- 
vidual and not a member of some social whole. 

But I scarcely need to speak further of the obli- 
gations to society which rest upon every individual ; 
and I, therefore, pass on at once to mention 
several reasons of a more special sort, why this 
obligation to regard the relation of his work to 
the public welfare rests upon the professional 
teacher. In the case of nearly every teacher, his 
very preparation for the work of teaching has en- 
gendered a certain peculiar obligation to society. 
In the great majority of cases, in the system preva- 
lent in this country and of which we are so justly 
proud for its "freedom," it is society which has 
given this preparation — '' given' ^ it literaUy, be- 
cause few of us there be, indeed, who have ever 
paid for one-half, or even for one-fourth, of what 
we have received. Besides, however this prepara- 
tion may have been received, it raises the teacher 
above the average ability to contribute to the pub- 
lic welfare. Now, there is a very sound judgment 
gaining ground that no individual can acquire 
wealth without being placed in this way under pe- 
culiar obligations to the society whose co-operation 
and active assistance have been essential to both its 
acquisition and its continued safe possession. And 
I might add that this obligation is made particu- 
larly binding by the present conditions which have, 



248 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

in some respects at least, favored the acquisition 
of wealth by the few at the expense of the many. 
These conditions, it is rightly held, put additional 
obligations on those classes to whom society — altho 
so often in ignorance or with sinister motives — ^has 
literally given so much of the country's wealth of 
natural resources and legitimate annual income. 
But why, I ask you, does not something similar 
in the way of obligation rest upon the individual 
to whom society, at its own cost, has given the 
riches of knowledge, the wealth of a public school, 
or a college, or a university education? It seems 
to me that the motto, NoMesse oblige, applies al- 
most equally well in both cases. 

Not only the preparation, but also the position, 
of the teacher imposes a peculiar obligation to seek 
for the public welfare. The welfare of every class 
and every section of society depends largely — ^yes, 
chiefly, upon the mental and moral, as well as 
physical culture of its children and youth. This is 
true of its present-day welfare. No community 
whose children and youth are not well cared for — 
body, mind and morals— can possibly *'fare well" 
in the higher meaning of this dubious phrase. The 
nation is just beginning to wake up to a realization 
of this truth as affecting the physical condition of 
her children and youth. Efforts are making to se- 
cure more nourishing and better cooked food, and 
cleaner and better ventilated housing for the chil- 



THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 249 

dren of the nation ; to secure the maturing of their 
bodies and of their minds against efforts of un- 
scrupulous greed to obtain cheaper labor, or higher 
rentals on the tenements in which so many of them 
are forced to live; to see that they are not suffer- 
ing from eye-strain and adenoids and from other 
similar evils, and to mitigate the system of cram- 
ming which is working so much evil to both pupils 
and teachers. We are even — ^but all too cautiously 
and dubiously — considering whether something can 
not be done effectually to warn their parents and to 
instruct them, with respect to the dreadful results 
in social ways, of the increasing prevalence of 
sexual and other forms of vice and immorality. 
And there are at least a minority of us who are 
deeply interested in educational matters, that are 
hoping the day may come when explicit and force- 
ful ethical instruction and discipline will fill a much 
larger place in our entire educational system from 
the kindergarten to the university and professional 
school. In all these, and in all other similar mat- 
ters of the public welfare, every conscientious 
teacher is bound to be especially interested. And 
by his very employment as a teacher, every one 
of us is placed in a position to be especially in- 
fluential. 

The teacher's relation to the parents and guar- 
dians of the children and youth of the land still 
further enforces the obligation of the ideal of the 



250 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

public welfare. The changes which are so rapidly 
going on in the domestic and social conditions of 
our national life are yearly making this statement 
more emphatically, and even startlingly, true. 
Fewer parents than was formerly the case take 
any active part in the education of their children. 
Time was, when most of us learned our letters on 
the floor at home, and learned to read at our 
mother's knee. In those days, in many families, 
all the early education was under supervision at 
home, and much of what was learned at all, in all 
the earlier branches of learning, was learned at 
home. Or, perhaps, the minister started the boys 
of the parish in their Latin, The professional edu- 
cation of the intending lawyer or doctor, too, was 
chiefly gained, not by attending school, but by 
reading law or medicine in the office of some prac- 
titioner. But now parents, as a class, have thrown 
off almost all personal responsibility for the edu- 
cation of even their own offspring. They have 
turned them over— body, soul and every otherwise 
— ^to the professional teacher. Even if they would 
like themselves to do something in a more personal 
way for the education of their own children, they 
have neither the time nor the ability ; and the very 
character of the home-life makes all effective in- 
fluences in this direction more difficult, if not quite 
impossible. If anything is to be added to what 
is expected of the public school, in the way of 



TEE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 251 

moral and religious instruction and training, this, 
too, is not undertaken at home, but is committed 
to the so-called Sunday-school. Here a consider- 
able portion of the teachers are the very same per- 
sons to whom the secular education of the children 
is entrusted. I confess that the present condition, 
with all its tendencies, seems to put an unjustifi- 
able amount of the responsibilities properly belong- 
ing to the parents, upon the teachers ; and to have 
the complementary bad effect of indulging the 
parents in shirking the responsibilities which they 
have assumed in becoming parents. On the other 
hand, the conscientious teacher can not see the 
way clear to throwing back any large measure of 
this imposition upon the persons to whom it 
properly belongs. What, then, can he do but ac- 
cept it as a sort of sacred trust? 

If I seem to you to have exaggerated the obliga- 
tion of the average teacher to consider the public 
welfare as one of his more influential ideals, and 
to have made the burden of this obligation as a 
kind of sacred trust too great easily to be borne, 
I turn the more eagerly to speak of the practical 
nature of this same idea. What is in fact the op- 
portunity and what the power of the average 
teacher to realize something of this ideal in case 
he feels the obligation to cherish it ? How can the 
teacher — just the average teacher, in the ordinary 
community — manage his work so as to contribute 



252 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

in any considerable way to the welfare of that 
community, and possibly to the welfare of a much 
larger section of the public ? Of course, the answer 
at once springs to our lips: By being a good and 
successful teacher he, of necessity, makes some 
worthy contribution to the sum of the general 
good. But the question I am now pressing has 
reference to contributions that are over and above 
the very important contribution that is constantly 
being made in the work of teaching. 

Before being more specific, it is well to bear in 
mind these two thoughts which may help to moder- 
ate our expectations and make them more reason- 
able, without having the bad effect of suppressing 
them, or turning them in adverse directions. And, 
first, the improvement of the physical, mental and 
moral condition of any larger number of persons, 
collected into a so-called community, is apt to be, 
from the nature of the case, a slow and irregular 
growth. A sound and serviceable man or woman — 
just one single human individual of which Provi- 
dence might be proud — can not be produced in a 
single day. No other animal costs so much to bring 
to maturity as the human animal. And under the 
most favorable conditions the development of any 
one boy or girl to ripe manhood or womanhood is 
one of the most notable of nature's achievements, 
even when nature is helped out by an environment 
which has cost thousands of years of the civilizing 



TEE CHIEF IDEALS OF TEE TEAGEER 253 

process. The average human being, as judged by 
his own ideal standards and those not the highest 
type of ideals, is still a pretty poor sort of a crea- 
ture. We as a nation, in this twentieth century 
of the so-called Christian era, are not more than 
an eighth part civilized. And the best attempts to 
get either the individual child, or the whole com- 
munity of grown men and women, just a little fur- 
ther toward this ideal of human perfection, indi- 
vidual and social, generally have only partial and 
fitfully good results. All this is not said, and is 
not to be remembered by us teachers, by way of 
discouragement, but the rather, to guard us against 
premature and unwarrantable discouragement. It 
is the steady pull and the long pull, and the pull 
altogether which is going to lift the public higher 
toward its own ideal of an improved social welfare. 
And, in the second place, many, perhaps most, 
of the most successful of the teacher's attempts to 
contribute to the welfare of society in some large 
way are sure to be hidden from his knowledge. 
The bread which we cast upon the waters of a 
single human soul whose improvement is com- 
mitted to our care is very apt speedily to disappear 
beneath those waters and never to return to our 
sight. But if it floats down the stream and over- 
flows the wider fields lying far below, the chances 
are against our having it returned to us, even after 
many days. 



254 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

There are, however, certain considerations which 
may properly contribute to the encouragement and 
hopefulness of every teacher, with respect to the 
feasible character of this ideal — to be realized, 
indeed, but only very partially and in time. 

The teachers of any community are, as a rule, 
better informed than the average of the community 
as to what measures are really suited to favor an 
increase of the public welfare. In making this re- 
mark, I include all kinds and grades of teachers, 
in all kinds of communities. Obviously, the 
teachers of engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, 
botany, bacteriology, surgery and medicine are, on 
the whole, the best fitted members of society to 
secure its sanitary and physical welfare. If all 
public enterprises, bearing on the public improve- 
ments of this sort — the laws enacted and enforced, 
the measures devised and executed, and the works 
planned and constructed — could be taken entirely 
out of the hands of the politicians and committed 
to the hands of the teachers — taxation and the rais- 
ing of revenue, for these purposes alone being 
excepted — who can doubt that the physical and 
sanitary welfare of the public would be much bet- 
ter protected than it is at the present time? They 
are the men who know, and the politicians are, for 
the greater part, the men who do not know. 
Doubtless there would be disagreement among these 
classes of professional men, as to laws, measures^ 



THE CBIEF IDE ALB OF TEE TEACHER 255 

plans, and even as to facts. But, not so much dis- 
agreement as is encountered among the politicians 
when anything to be done for the public welfare 
is proposed in these directions. And I am quite 
certain that the motives for disagreement and the 
means for securing agreement would be far less 
sinister and corrupt in the case of the professional 
men if they were completely entrusted with these 
matters of public welfare than is now the case with 
the politicians who have them in control. The engi- 
neers are the men who know best how the public 
works are to be made conducive to the public wel- 
fare. The chemists know best what chemical com- 
pounds are injurious, what harmless, what bene- 
ficial for nourishment or for the curing of disease. 
The surgeons and doctors know better than the 
average of the people how vivisection and vaccina- 
tion and antitoxins may best be made contributory 
to the public weal; and so on, and so on, through 
all the ranks of the men devoted to these various 
professions. Even where these men are not teachers 
in the strictly academical application of the word, 
they are often no less really beneficent instructors 
of the people in such matters. Agricultural 
schools, agricultural stations and articles written 
by the men employed in them are important ways 
in which the professional investigator and teacher 
is constantly conferring the greatest benefit upon 
the public. 



256 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

The securing of all kinds of physical welfare for 
the vast multitudes of our growing population is 
becoming more and more a matter for instruction 
and, therefore, a matter for the teacher. Nor are 
the superiority over the average of the community 
and the responsibility which it imposes, and the 
opportunity which it offers, confined to the experts 
in the cities and more populous communities. 
More than the average man or woman, the teacher 
in the smaller communities and in the country is 
aware of the progress being made in the particu- 
lar sciences which deal with the conditions that 
contribute to the physical and sanitary welfare of 
the people. His general education is nowadays 
such that he has come to know, as most of the men 
and women do not know, what men ought to eat 
and drink; how they ought to clothe themselves 
if they desire health rather than mere display ; how 
to escape sickness and secure a better measure of 
health; what prevalent opinions are well founded 
and what are pernicious superstitions. It is true 
that the so-called common people of the country 
and of the town are apt to resent anything which 
savors of interference, or has the air of assumed 
superiority and pretended condescension; but this 
is where the need and benefits of tactfulness, as 
something beyond mere information and good- 
will, are especially apparent. 

The average teacher is also much better informed 



THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 257 

than the average of the rest of the community as 
to what is good for the mental and moral welfare 
of the public. He knows, as most of the others 
do not, the constitution of the country, the prin- 
ciples of its political organization, the stimulating 
and inspiring examples of its historical develop- 
ment. And in these days when the nation has so 
sadly forgotten so much of all this, and is so in 
danger of being swept from its very foundations 
by the incoming tides of foreign immigration and 
by the defection of its own sons and daughters, the 
chance is good that the teacher may do something 
of no small value for the public welfare by instruc- 
tion and example in matters such as these. 

The average teacher knows better than the aver- 
age man or woman what is doing, and what has 
been done, for the improvement of education, both 
at home and abroad. I can not say that I think the 
fruits of the large amount of lecturing and writing 
on what is called ''pedagogy," which has been so 
loudly and extensively advertised, have been worth 
the full price of their cost. But they have had a 
prospective value which is far greater than their 
present value. They have done much toward re- 
vealing in clearer light some of today's evils and 
have set in motion thoughts and plans for their 
removal. With all this confusion of practise, of 
opinions, and of ideals, on the general subject of 
education, it has not been easy for the workman. 



268 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

however isolated from his fellow experimenters, to 
remain wholly unacquainted. The books on edu- 
cation which he reads, the text-books which he 
selects or which he is compelled to use by the selec- 
tion of others, the private conversations he has 
with other teachers, over the experiences of the 
craft, the speeches and papers to which he lis- 
tens at such conventions as he is able to attend — 
all these ways of stirring up interest, exciting re- 
flection and forming opinion, necessarily make the 
teachers of the country more alert and well- 
informed, if not vastly more wise than the aver- 
age of the people, as to what is doing and what 
ought to be done for the improvement of our 
educational system. By taking some worthy part 
in the theoretical and the practical solution of 
these educational problems the teachers as a class 
can contribute much to the public welfare in the 
future. 

The average teacher knows better than the aver- 
age of the people what is the best literature, both 
of ancient and of modern times, and what are the 
best of the books that are coming out from both 
the native and the foreign presses of the present 
time. The teachers know better than do the people 
at large what is the correct and elegant use of the 
English language. I fear it must be confessed that 
many trashy and unworthy books are read by the 
professional class to which we belong, and that a 



THE CHIEF IDEALS OF THE TEACHER 259 

very considerable number of the school-ma'ams and 
school-masters of the country somewhat habitually 
indulge themselves in poor and even slangy Eng- 
lish. Undoubtedly, some of these teachers do not 
know any better. But I am speaking of the aver- 
age of this class as compared with the average of 
the people at large. And certainly the teachers of 
the country can contribute liberally to the circu- 
lation of the best books and to the taste for the 
best literature of all ages and all peoples. They 
can have much to say as to what books shall be in, 
and what books shall be kept out of, the increasing 
number of public libraries that are being erected 
and endowed thruout the length and breadth of 
the land. If they read good books themselves and 
become affectionately familiar with their contents, 
they can disseminate their fine ideas and the fine 
manner of expressing fine ideas among the common 
people of the land. They can discourage by 
example and by ridicule the habit of slovenly and 
vulgar speech, which is everywhere so distressingly 
prevalent with us at the present time. Let me not 
be misunderstood on this point. I am not advo- 
cating what is finical or superficially elegant in 
daily speech ; or the cultivation of a speciously ele- 
gant style of epistolatory or other composition; 
or the total abstinence of slang; or even the aboli- 
tion of the judicious oath, where the object of con- 
demnation is some deed or some person especially 



260 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

outrageous. But I am saying that, in general, the 
public welfare would be greatly served if our 
youth and children could be taught to use the 
mother tongue with sincerity, simplicity and essen- 
tially good judgment and good taste, and to avoid 
the unceasing use of vulgar slang and senseless 
exaggeration. For a man's speech not only betray- 
eth, but also herayeth or defiles him. Perhaps, also, 
by the united effort of all the teachers in the pub- 
lic schools we might have our boys and girls fitted 
for college so that they could express single sen- 
tences in correct English and even spell correctly 
most of the words in ordinary use ; or at least know 
how to look them up in the dictionary. 

And best of all, the average teacher is in a posi- 
tion to know better than the average man or woman 
how to inquire, to study and to think ; what is good 
for the mind and the heart and how to furnish the 
mind well and to ennoble and purify the affections. 
The average common-school teacher may not be a 
very cultivated, intellectual and noble personality, 
but he or she is undoubtedly, taking the average, 
above the average of the entire community, both 
mentally and morally. 

The teacher's ideal of contributing to the pub- 
lic welfare is made more practicable by the fact 
that the public naturally looks to its teachers for 
instruction and leadership in several important 
matters touching the public welfare. Altho we 



TEE CHIEF IDEALS OF TEE TEACEER 261 

have departed far, as a nation, from that estimate 
of the value of the profession which still lingers 
in China and in the Orient generally, and altho 
learning and wisdom have become words in certain 
quarters to juggle with or to treat with scorn, the 
common people still look to those whom they regard 
as sufficiently educated to be entrusted with the 
education of their children, with a continued con- 
fidence in their judgment and their good will. In 
their own hearts, the people of the United States 
know that their teachers are, for wisdom and for 
honesty, on the whole, much more trustworthy and 
unselfish than their politicians or their traders. 
And as the public system of education develops, 
even the smaller communities are more likely to 
have among the number of those who are instruct- 
ing their children those who have special knowledge 
in various branches and departments of knowledge. 
The teachers as a class will then be more *' looked 
up to'* than they are at the present day. The 
fact that one is looked up to by the public makes 
one much more able to contribute generously to 
the welfare of the same public. 

Again, the very character of the teacher's work 
is such as to make it easier for him to do certain 
favors for the public which employs him. He can 
plead truthfully and effectively for certain im- 
provements in the sanitary, mental and moral con- 
dition of the conununity on the ground that these 



262 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

improvements are necessary for the welfare of its 
children and youth. The school-houses must not 
be poorly lighted and ill-ventilated. The children 
must not be sent to school unwashed, or allowed 
to go thru the school day unfed. The authorities 
must not allow them to play truant or to misbe- 
have greatly on their way to and from the school. 
Arrangements must be such that a proper modesty 
can be conserved as between the sexes. The best 
available of text-books must be provided and as 
much of an equipment of blackboards, maps, charts, 
apparatus and other appliances for successful in- 
struction as is possible must be provided. Col- 
leagues and subordinates must have a sufficient 
equipment to bear their part in the work of educa- 
tion. The saloon and other corrupting influences 
must be kept at a distance from the school-house. A 
certain amount of discipline must be enforced in 
spite of any attempted interference from parental 
or political influence. Surely no other class in the 
community is so well fitted, either by their knowl- 
edge or their position, to plead for and to secure 
these primary needs of the best system of public 
education as are the teachers of the country. This 
sort of influence may also be extended to the 
esthetical environment of the children and youth, 
not only in the school-room and about the school- 
house, but also in the home, the village and the 
surrounding country. The present attempts to 



THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER 263 

give to all the pupils of the public schools some 
acquaintance and appreciative feeling, as directed 
toward what is beautiful in nature and in art, is 
destined to be of inestimable benefit to the whole 
Republic. It may not result in increasing the 
number of really great painters, sculptors or mu- 
sicians; and it is not desirable that it should in- 
crease the number of dabblers in these various 
forms of art. But it can scarcely fail to tend to- 
ward the increase of the number of refined and 
happy, although lowly homes, and it may easily 
make more popular the combination of real beauty 
with cheapness of manufacture, in which the Japa- 
nese so greatly excel. (Of course I do not have 
in mind the cheap things sent to this country for 
sale from Japan; they are not native Japanese 
products at all, but wretched imitations of the 
worst forms of German manufacture, for the most 
part.) 

The various ways in which teachers may co-oper- 
ate to bring about an increase in the public wel- 
fare are too familiar with all of you to need dis- 
cussion at length. University and school-extension 
lectures furnish one means for the teacher to en- 
large the sphere of his public influence. There are 
some things, if only a very few, which the teacher 
may tell, not only to his pupils, but also to a select 
number outside the school-room. Leading or par- 
ticipating in excursions of an improving, as well 



264 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

as recreative sort, after the fashion provided for 
in Switzerland, to which I have already referred, 
offers another means of extending one's influence. 
The teachers are most important factors in the for- 
mation of clubs, reading circles, lyceums and other 
similar means for bringing the benefits of knowl- 
edge to a widening circle of the people. In all 
other ways the teacher should be recognized as a 
*^ public-spirited person." But after thinking up 
all these ways of increasing our work for the ideal 
of the public good, we return in thought to the 
special opportunity afforded by the work of teach- 
ing itself. The good teacher can not help con- 
tributing something by way of his own special 
manufacture to the increase of the general good. 
For his is the manufacture of good men and good 
women; and it is only such men and women that 
can secure the general good. 



Part IV 

THE TEACHER'S RELATION 
TO SOCIETY AND THE STATE 



265 



LECTURE XIII 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY; 
DEPENDENT ON EDUCATION 

I confess to you frankly that from this time on 
I would gladly much enlarge and almost completely 
change the character of my audience. Enough, 
perhaps, has already been said of the more specific 
relations in which the teacher stands toward the 
welfare of society and toward the stability, and 
what I will venture to call the *' spiritual, " prog- 
ress of the state— at least, so far as the teachers 
are especially bound to take note of all this. But 
I am now going to make a few observations on the 
national system of education, in its larger, more 
popular aspects, and in a way less limited to the 
duties of a particular class. In a word, I am going 
to consider the subject of education in a more 
ethnic way. For this reason I should like, as I have 
already said, to address those who make the laws, 
and control the institutions, which provide the 
educational facilities of the country, define its 
educational policy, and arrange and supply the 
material for carrying into effect its educational 
system. In a word, I should like to get at the 
public, whose system it is that is working out such 

267 



268 THE TEACHER'S FBACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

large results for the good or the ill of society and of 
our political and national institutions. But after 
all, it is not only worth while for us as belonging 
to the class of professional teachers, to be ever 
learners and students of these wider relations ; but, 
as has, I trust, been made sufficiently clear, if we 
are intelligent and wise in our convictions, and 
earnest and unselfish in action, we can as a class 
do much to bring about desirable changes. 

Let us, first of all, strive to place our thoughts 
and our resolves upon a rational and historical 
basis. As a help to this end, we may briefly con- 
sider the dependence of society for its welfare and 
for its advancement, upon the instruction and devel- 
opment of its individual members. This dependence 
is partly obscure, indirect and pretty strictly lim- 
ited; and it is partly more obvious, direct and 
subject to limitations which do not constitute irre- 
movable obstacles. The former kind of dependence 
operates chiefly through two classes of factors or 
conditions which determine the social welfare. The 
first of these are the physical conditions which 
Nature has set in such fashion that no kind or 
amount of education, scientific and moral, can to 
any considerable extent, overcome them. For 
example, education could not advance beyond a 
certain relative low level the social and economic 
welfare of the inhabitants of Labrador or Pata- 
gonia. Increase of scientific knowledge can not 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY 269 

find coal or the mineral ores, where nature has not 
placed them. Nor is it likely that the planting of 
agricultural colleges within the Arctic Circle would 
enable the dwellers there to grow cotton and sugar- 
cane profitably. Education cannot give equal 
opportunity to the United States and to the steppes 
of Central Asia; it cannot make Canada the coun- 
terpart of the Argentine Republic; or render 
Alaska the rival in all respects of Florida. But it 
could do much for the economic and social better- 
ment of all these countries; and without it, the 
most favored of them— it is at least conceivable — 
might reduce itself in time below the level of the 
less favored, if only the latter had learned how to 
make the most of its scantier resources. And if we 
could by some process of education get rid of the 
ignorance and the immoral greed that are now 
holding back, rather than helping forward, the 
cause of fair trade and mutually profitable com- 
merce, there are comparatively few places in the 
world, where education and the discipline of moral 
character, could not result in a comfortable degree, 
if not a high grade, of economic and social pros- 
perity. 

Besides these physical limiting conditions of the 
more difficult, if not of the totally unmanageable 
kind, there are certain inherited racial peculiari- 
ties, or fixed social conditions of the ancestral order, 
which afford determined and tedious sources of 



270 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

opposition to all the social betterment that an 
improved system of education, if unhindered, 
might provide. Of a people, hampered by such 
influences, in a truly awful but, I believe, not 
altogether hopeless manner, the Chinese Empire 
is today a notable example. Here are three hun- 
dred and fifty or four hundred millions— and it 
will probably be some time before any census taken 
by the Government will tell us which— of people, 
whose racial characteristics are a strange mixture 
of admirable gifts with ancestral habits that are 
rank with the odor of mental and moral corruption 
and decay ; and one of the most pressing and dark 
problems is just this — how to change the existing 
system of education so as to make it co-operate to 
the end of the economic and social betterment of the 
whole body of the people. China thus affords a 
notable example of the impressive truth that both 
the sins and the virtues of the preceding genera- 
tions, in matters of education as in all other mat- 
ters, are surely visited upon the following gener- 
ations. There is no surer truth for us to reflect 
upon than that our educational faults and failures 
will surely be visited upon the youth of the country, 
and through them, upon the whole country, down to 
the fourth, or even to the tenth generation. 

In general, the present generation, however well 
educated, can never wholly overcome, and usually 
can not greatly alter, the accumulation of unfavor- 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY 271 

able social conditons which come to it from the 
past. We are pretty tightly bound by our fore- 
bears, whether for good or for evil, however much 
we may boast of our ability to "make all things 
new," and however much we may struggle to kick 
off the cords with which they have bound us. We 
may as well confess this at once; we can not cut 
ourselves loose from the past; we do not know so 
very much more about education, as a matter that 
fits men and women to act their part well in the 
social whole, than our fathers did. We have 
upset, or thrown into the melting-pot, many, many, 
old things: we are discoverers and doers of a few 
good new things. But we have not really settled 
many important problems: much of our so-called 
pedagogy is painfully poor stuff, and is coming to 
be so regarded by the most sensible part of the 
public interested in education. And just now one 
of the most hopeful tendencies in educational circles 
is to go backward, at least by a process of reflec- 
tive examination, and consider anew in what 
respects we have been wise, and in what respects 
we have been foolish, in departing so far and so 
rapidly from the old-time system of education. 

Whatever our judgment or our action may be, 
in our comparison of the old with the new, we need 
to remember that human nature, and child nature, 
do not change— at least, they do not change essen- 
tially and in any short period of time. Our day is 



272 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

only a small fraction of the day of the race; our 
civilization is not the last word of progress; and 
perhaps, we Americans are not God's highest and 
final expression to the Divine ideal of humanity. 
At any rate, we shall have to accept the fact, that 
every generation is chiefly indebted for what it is 
and for what it seems, of itself, to do, to countless 
generations of the past ; and also, that no one gen- 
eration can proceed wisely or safely on the assump- 
tion that it can all at once break wholly away from 
that past. 

An educated public of the present day can, how- 
ever, do something materially to improve its eco- 
nomic and social inheritance; and if only it could 
all be educated, morally as well as scientifically, 
and could be united by good-will in a common 
effort, an educated public could do much to trans- 
form its inheritance. But plans to secure such a 
public, all of a sudden, as it were, may be looked 
upon somewhat as we should look upon the motion, 
said once to have been facetiously made in an 
ecclesiastical Convention, for the abolition of orig- 
inal sin! 

As an offset, or complement, of the principle 
that great changes require a long time to effect, 
we have the principle that nations, like individuals, 
have crises in their intellectual, moral, and relig- 
ious development, when all manner of changes, 
either for the better or for the worse, are greatly 



TEE DEVELOPMimT OF SOCIETY 273 

accelerated. These crises are in part brought about 
by the prevalent system of instruction and disci- 
pline of the social and political organization; but 
they themselves give opportunity for relatively 
sharp and sudden changes in the policy which regu- 
lates the prevalent system. Some such crisis, or 
succession of crises, seems to have overtaken the 
economic and social development of the American 
nation at the present time. It probably, therefore, 
affords opportunity for marked and rapid changes 
in that educational system upon which the plans 
for all economic and social betterment are so 
dependent. 

Thoughts like those which have just been uttered 
introduce us to a consideration of the more direct 
and immediate relations between the instruction 
and discipline of the individual members of society 
and the promotion of the social welfare. Of course, 
it is obvious commonplace to say that, if all the 
individuals of any community are as well instructed 
and disciplined as can be, then the society of which 
they are individual members will already have been 
as much improved as education can improve it. 
But, as I said in a previous lecture, it is my grow- 
ing belief that, in the making of laws, the reform- 
ing of evil physical and moral conditions, and in 
the whole system of instituting and administering 
our system of education, we are too much losing 
sight of the concrete individual in a collective, but 



274 TEE TEACHER*8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHT 

entirely mythical personality, called ** society.'* In 
my judgment, we shall never reach the much-to-be- 
desired result simply by multiplying' societies. It 
is too true that, of many of the existing societies 
the net result is a maximum of committees, offi- 
cers, and consequently of expense, and a minimum 
of efficient workers who are fitted for the work they 
are employed to undertake; and who are brought 
into close-fitting and fruitful relations with the 
person^ in whose behalf the work is understood to 
be initiated and conducted. On the other hand, 
there is increasing need of prolonged individual 
influence, which is made directly to bear upon the 
multiplying of that sort of well-informed and well- 
disposed individuals out of whom a better social 
whole must be constituted. Now it is the business 
of education, in its relation to the economic and 
social betterment of society, to furnish a supply of 
just such well-informed and well-disposed individ- 
uals. I say well-informed and well-disposed. For 
here again we come upon the thought that any 
system of education which does not result in the 
formation of a sound and noble and serviceable 
character, fails of reaching the most important 
and highest aim of education. 

But any national system of education, in order 
to fulfill its purposes more nearly in the complete 
fashion, must also educate the individuals brought 
up under it, so as to sustain proper relations to 



TEE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY 275 

one another in the varied circumstances and condi- 
tions of the national life. It must include arrange- 
ments for putting the individual units together in 
a way to secure the life and development of the 
whole. The various classes, trades, businesses, 
professions, local and national officials, must be 
educated and trained, each in its own craft, busi- 
ness, profession, official function; and also each 
must know its own place and standing toward the 
others, on all of which the welfare of society is 
dependent. But what can be more lamentably 
defective than the condition of our system of edu- 
cation, in this regard, at the present time? 

In former days and other lands, and still in the 
Orient generally, the social classes are found to be 
separated by lines distinctly drawn; the different 
employments were more strictly classified and the 
rights and duties of each more carefully defined. 
The apprentice knew his place, and the master 
knew his privileges. Husband, and wife, and 
children, were carefully instructed and made by 
comparatively unvarying custom, to know and to 
keep the positions respectively belonging to them. 
But, whether for the better or the worse, we have 
changed all this. At any rate, it is not at all likely 
that we shall ever revert to the old conditions ; and 
I think that, making the proper allowances, we 
might all agree that the changes, if they have not 
been, are certainly going to be, on the whole, much 



276 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

for the better. But, in order to secure the advan- 
tages to society at large which these changes make 
inherently possible, must we not have our system 
of education so adapted to these changes that each 
individual shall be better fitted than is at present 
possible, to act as a well-disposed and well-informed 
individual in the particular position which he 
assumes to occupy ? Men ought not to be appointed 
to diplomatic positions who know nothing of the 
duties, responsibilities, and the amenities of diplo- 
macy ; or who know little or nothing of the history 
and institutions of the countries to which they are 
sent. Men should not be permitted to make our 
laws, whether at the national or the state capitals, 
or in the municipality, who know and care nothing 
about the business, and especially about the ethics, 
of law-making. Neither trusts nor trade-unions 
should be officered and run by men who know and 
care nothing about the rights and the duties 
implied in both these forms of organization, and 
about the ethics of the relations existing, of neces- 
sity, between them. Boys and girls should not be 
allowed to marry, breed children, and get divorced, 
without some better knowledge of, and more solemn 
regard for, what is involved in all this. Yes, and 
if we are going to educate everybody at the public 
expense, why should not our cooks and housemaids 
be made to know their rights and duties as toward 
their mistresses; and the mistresses, in their turn, 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY 277 

their rights and duties as toward their cooks and 
housemaids ? 

Now, I am far enough from thinking that all 
these negative and positive virtues can be secured 
and enforced by any amount of legal enactments. 
But I do believe that something well worth the cost 
could be secured by wise changes and improvements 
in our system of public-school and university edu- 
cation. Indeed, the battle would be more than half 
won, if these institutions could stem the tide of 
evil influences constantly arising from the prevalent 
ignorance and carelessness with regard to truths of 
fact and principles of righteousness. Well-informed 
and well-disposed individuals, living and acting in 
all these economic and social relations to one 
another, are already a society whose social welfare 
is secure. 

The almost absolute dependence of the social 
progress of any people upon the extent and charac- 
ter of the education given to the individuals of 
which society is composed is sufficiently obvious. 
In saying this, we are, indeed, considering ** social 
progress, ' ' only in so far as any society can control 
the conditions of its own progress ; and we are con- 
sidering ''education," in that comprehensive way, 
to which our thought was introduced in the first 
lecture. But even with these limitations, land 
although the professional teachers are always lim- 
ited in other less unavoidable ways, the class, by 



278 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

virtue of its functions, its equipment, and its ideals, 
is one of the most powerful of forces for the eco- 
nomic and social betterment of the people of any- 
country. 

I may now rapidly pass in review — giving an 
example or two under each head — some of the more 
particular forms of the dependence of society, for 
its welfare and progress, upon the education of the 
people. A measure of particularity seems desir- 
able, because, while all Americans spontaneously 
recognize the value of education, and are ready- 
often inordinately— to boast of their own superi- 
ority over other countries in this respect, they are 
quite too unwilling to let its maxims and regula- 
tions and conclusions influence and control them, 
when it is a matter of greed or self-interest which 
stands in the way. And this is most amply illustra- 
ted by the first of the particulars to which I now 
call your attention. 

Society is dependent for its welfare upon an edu- 
cated knowledge and intelligent use of its material 
resources. It is science which warns us against the 
useless waste of these material resources. Every- 
where, and in all history, uneducated man is uneco- 
nomical. He is a spendthrift, wherever he can be, 
of the good things which nature has provided for 
his use. Amongst savage peoples this wastefulness 
is chiefly the result of ignorance, coupled with the 
Ijard and uncertain physical and economic condi' 



TSB DEVELOPMENT OF BOCtETY 279 

tions of their environment. In decayed civiliza- 
tions, as for example, in Korea, ignorance is 
coupled with a grasping and corrupt Government. 
As one of the natives said to a friend of mine, 
** Formerly, when there was good year, we ate up 
all the rice that the Government did not steal ; when 
there was a bad year, we starved/' With us, the 
shameful waste of the national resources which has 
gone on for fifty and more years, has mainly been 
due to the avarice of private individuals and cor- 
porations, encouraged or permitted by the Govern- 
ment—an avarice, which, while it is given to self- 
interested forms of economy, is often most waste- 
ful of that in which society has a permanent inter- 
est. Education, with a strong leaning to the moral 
side, must combine with laws enacted under the 
influence of science, to check this disgraceful waste 
of the material necessary for the permanent social 
welfare. 

It is science, also, which tells us how to discover, 
appropriate, and increase or improve, the same 
material resources. It is science which shows us 
how to secure the improved health and strength, 
and the prolonged life of the individual members 
of society— thus promoting the welfare of society. 
But I have already said enough to enforce and 
illustrate these contentions. Only it must be educa- 
tion that includes training in social morality as 
well as knowledge of the principles of social econ- 



280 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL^ PHILOSOPHY 

omy, if any great amount of practical benefit is to 
result. And I take this occasion to affirm that, in my 
judgment, those teachers and writers on economics 
and sociology, so-called, who are trying to leave 
ethics out of their account, and even those who are 
not positively emphasizing the ethical side in their 
account, can not do so much for the social welfare 
by way of increasing knowledge, as they are sure to 
do against it by way of tolerating or apologizing 
for immorality. 

But we may dwell more tenderly on the thoughts 
that come to the front as we consider the depen- 
dence of society for its refined pleasures upon edu- 
cation in the appreciation and love of nature, 
literature, art and philosophy. The social welfare 
and social progress of any people are to a large 
extent dependent upon the way in which they take 
their recreations, and spend those hours and mo- 
ments which they can snatch from the life of daily 
occupation and toil. For individuals, or for the 
people, who like so many of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
demand strong excitement in order to *'whip up'* 
the feelings of pleasure, or who, like the Chinese, 
resort to the deadening influences of a drug in 
order to relieve the pains of poverty and disease, 
or the sorrows of loss, or the depression of ennui, 
there is a most heavy handicap placed upon the 
social welfare by the character of their amusements. 
This might be illustrated by the gross drunkenness 



TEE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY 281 

and bestial lust of London, Edinburgh, and Glas- 
gow; by the mad dances, or insane *'joy rides" of 
the French and the American; by the increasing 
demand for club-life on the part of the women of 
this country and of Europe. 

Now, there is scarcely any other way in which 
the degree of real refinement of mind and heart of 
any community may be more surely tested than by 
the character of its recreations and amusements. 
The quiet enjoyment of Nature and her products 
of trees and flowers and birds, and even of curious 
insects and freaks of plant life; the entertainment 
afforded by every form of really good art with its 
persistent refusal to allow its ideals to bow down 
and worship before the gods of mammon or of lust, 
or to burn the nauseous incense of sensationalism; 
the still hours spent with good books that tell the 
story of lives worthy to be noted, or record the 
incidents and lessons of history, or expresss in 
poetry and drama and romance, the aspirations, the 
joys and sorrows, the failures and follies and the 
triumphs of human souls— all these and similar 
ways of spending time may actually re-create, 
rather than further exhaust and debauch, the 
society that knows how to make use of them. Nor 
must we omit to mention the value of those scenes 
and events in Nature that stir our feelings of awe 
and reverence, or the wholesome effect of reading 
and seeing and studying the great tragedies, of 



282 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOBOPHY 

whose morally purifying effect the philosopher 
Aristotle made particular mention, centuries ago. 
All these forms of amusement are both marks and 
means of culture in the art of recreation. 

You must not think of me, however, as despising, 
or even looking down upon, the ** rag-time" music 
to which the foreign children of our great cities 
dance so gaily ; or the fun of the picnic in the coun- 
try or by the sea-shore; or the cheaply colored 
print, or crockery, to be found in the homes of the 
lowly, or even the show of marionettes or of mov- 
ing pictures. What I do deprecate and protest 
against is the strong national tendency to feel dis- 
satisfied with everything which does not appeal 
loudly to the senses, or excite the grosser forms of 
emotion, until they acquire the dreadful habit of 
refusing to respond to any but the most coarse and 
irritating kinds of stimuli, or else relapse into the 
condition of the individual who has become hlase or 
is constitutionally afflicted wth ennui. But surely, 
light wines and beer are less dangerous than wood- 
alcohol ; and going on foot, as long as one keeps to 
the sidewalks or the by-paths in the country, is less 
fraught with menace to life and limb than racing 
along the highway in an automobile at fifty miles 
an hour. That so many of the American people 
prefer the latter to the former kind of amusement 
is indicative of a low and threatening condition of 
the general culture. 



TEE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY 283 

Only such an education as refines the tastes and 
secures the rational enjoyment of the quieter and 
more intellectual forms of recreation can success- 
fully overcome this tendency to social weakness and 
corruption. But from its lowest to its highest 
grades, the system of education which is coming to 
prevail in this country is contending nobly, and 
with considerable success, with this evil tendency to 
coarse and sensuous and degrading forms of amuse- 
ment. As a system, it is striving to improve the 
appreciation and love of nature, of art, and of 
good literature, in the homes of the common people. 
And much help is being rendered from private 
sources, in gifts large and small, to create fresh-air 
funds, to support kindergartens, to endow libra- 
ries and furnish them with at least a wholesome 
mixture of really good books, to equip and open 
museums and art galleries, and to lay out public 
parks and provide means for getting the multitudes 
of the people to them. And if in this hot strife 
between vulgarity and refinement, between the 
grossly sensuous and the really esthetical, between 
the quiet happiness of a reasonable use of beauty 
and the riotous abandonment to that kind of pleas- 
ure which is followed by pain and degradation, the 
forces of education get and keep the upper-hand, 
the United States seems likely, above all other 
nations of the earth to have secured, bye and bye, 
the utmost of this kind of material for promoting 



284 TEE TEACEER'8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the social welfare. The one serious menace to the 
success in these efforts is, not the reasonable and 
sane interest in bodily culture, but the excessive 
and insane devotion to the rivalries of athletics. 

But neither education in the particular sciences, 
nor culture in the ''humanities," alone or in com- 
bination, is sufficient to secure for any people their 
social welfare and social progress. We must pass 
on, then, to consider the dependence of society for 
its welfare and progress, upon the education of all 
classes in the knowledge and appreciation of the 
principles of right conduct. It is possible for the 
individual to be acquainted with many forms of 
modern science, and to have much of a refined 
interest in nature, literature, art, and even philos- 
ophy, and still to be a bad, corrupt, and corrupt- 
ing member of society. It is even possible for a 
large community, or the majority of a nation, to 
make notable progress in the sciences, the arts, and 
the refinements of living, and to stand still, or 
even to fall back, morally. But the reactions to 
such a so-called progress, are, if not always 
promptly recognized, surely destined to follow. 
What the ancient Hebrews knew, but did not prac- 
tise, Wiiat Confucius taught the Chinese, but so 
largely as matter of mere theory, is as true today 
as it ever was: ''It is righteousness that exalteth 
a nation." Therefore, education in morals is more 
important than education in science and art; if, 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY 285 

indeed, we could ever wholly separate the two. For 
the highest and more nearly fixed aim of education, 
from the social point of view, is to secure for all the 
people the knowledge and the practise of what is 
right in conduct, in all their varied relations to one 
another. 

I fear it can not be said that the outlook upon 
our national system of education is in this respect, 
on the whole, as fair and hopeful as in the other 
respects to which attention has already been called. 
I have no completed plan to propose for the intro- 
duction of enforced instruction in morals, into the 
public schools and higher educational institutions, 
public and private, of the country. Perhaps, I 
ought not to assume that any such plan is at 
present feasible ; or that, if found feasible, it ought 
to be put into operation. As for myself, however, 
I firmly believe that a certain kind of instruction in 
ethics is practicable and vitally necessary in all 
our schools, public and private, and from lowest 
to highest. But the subject to which I wish now to 
call your attention is broader than the question of 
enforced education in ethics; it is inclusive of this 
and of much else. Granted, what no student of 
human progress can dispute, that the morality of 
any people determines in an important way its 
social prosperity and social progress, we note that 
there are now in this country three great forces at 
work to determine the character of the nation's 
moral life and development. These are the family, 



286 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the state, and the school. The family seems to me 
to be doing less and less for the moral instruction 
and discipline of the children and youth of the 
land. An increasing number of parents are either 
relatively indifferent, or relatively powerless, to 
secure obedience, truthfulness, fidelity, industry, 
honesty, purity — any or all of the most fundamen- 
tal of the virtues— in the case of their children. 
The state, whose laws and practises need in this 
respect a most thorough and radical change, has 
hitherto been the breeder of immorality among the 
young, almost if not quite as much as it has been 
the guardian of their virtues. It is just waking up 
in spots, as it were, to consider and to devise plans, 
not only for rescue but for some more positive con- 
tribution to the moral education of its future citi- 
zens and rulers. Shall the schools lag behind in 
this most imperative of all the demands made upon 
the educative process? Probably, their present 
influence for positive good is much greater than 
that of the law and its officers, and not much behind 
that of the family. But it needs to be greatly 
extended and strengthened; for the forming of 
character is the chief aim in education, and teach- 
ing itself is a moral and personal relation of a 
powerful order. 

But there is something higher and more subtile 
still. The welfare and progress of society depend 
in no uncertain way upon imbuing the people with 
a truly religious spirit and a corresponding regard 



TEE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY 287 

for their fellow men. Doubtless, definite instruc- 
tion in religious doctrine and the cultivation of 
religious habits can not be undertaken by the 
public schools. It is even a question how much of 
this should be enforced in private and sectarian 
educational institutions. It accords with our 
national spirit and traditions, to leave these things 
to the churches. But there is a certain spirit, which 
I do not hesitate to call ' ' religious, ' ' and which may 
be, and which should be, distinctly cultivated 
wherever it is designed to make the system of edu- 
cation minister in the highest way to the social 
welfare and social progress of the entire people. 
This spirit is appreciative of the mystery and 
sacredness of human existence. Its discipline would 
stop the horrible slaughter of human lives, by 
greed, lawlessness, and malice. The religious spirit 
is profoundly reverent; it abhors frivolity and 
shallowness and conceit. It is fraternal ; it values 
and cultivates the love of humanity; it is the 
avowed enemy of class — ^and race— hatred; it has 
the feeling of kindness toward all suffering and 
distressed souls. The religious spirit is at once 
free and submissive and loyal. It cheerfully obeys 
the right ; it unflinchingly opposes the wrong. The 
cultivation of this spirit is essential to the securing 
of a genuine and lofty social welfare. It ought, 
therefore, like an atmosphere, to pervade all the 
educational system of the country. 



LECTURE XIY 

THE NATIONAL STABILITY AND PROGRESS: 
DEPENDENT ON EDUCATION 

The theme of this lecture may be looked upon 
as only an extension of the consideration which 
occupied us in the preceding lecture. It is true 
that the two words — Society and State — draw our 
attention toward rather different aspects of our 
community life, its duties, its rights, its successes 
and its dangers. But with us, the State may be 
considered as society, holding sovereignty over a 
certain amount of the world's territory and or- 
ganized for purposes of government. More than 
in certain other forces of statehood, therefore, the 
social characteristics and social welfare of the body 
of the people determine the character of the govern- 
ment. On this and on other accounts the educa- 
tion of the people is, both directly and indirectly, 
more than ordinarily determinative of the stability 
and progress of the State. But again I must re- 
mind you that I am using the word education in its 
most comprehensive signification — as including all 
classes of means for forming men and women of 
sound, serviceable and noble character; and par- 
ticularly the influences that flow from the moral 



THE NATIONAL STABILITY AND PROGRESS 289 

and other ideals. It is the education which makes 
good citizens, sound and serviceable members of 
the body politic, in which the foundations of na- 
tional stability and progress are laid. 

In order partly to avoid repetition and partly 
to bring to your attention certain features of our 
system of education, from the point of view which 
emphasizes their political value, I am going to 
treat chiefly what the doctors might call the '' thera- 
peutical" aspects of our national problems as they 
stand related to this system. Nov/, therapeutics, as 
you know, has to do v/ith the science and art of 
healing. Our body politic is just now sorely af- 
flicted with certain diseases, which it is no exag- 
geration to call of an epidemic character, and which 
if left unchecked, are sure to leave permanent 
weakness behind them; if they do not even tend 
toward incurable decay and premature death. For 
the time has not yet gone by, and never will have 
gone by, when nations are compelled to suffer for 
the breach of those laws on obedience to which their 
vitality and growth depend. 

First of all, however, let us understand that be- 
ing stable and being stationary are two quite differ- 
ent things. Indeed, the two are, in important ways, 
incompatible, both for individuals and for states. 
To be sure, ** stability" comes from a root which 
does mean to stand still and *' progress" comes 
from a root which does mean to go forward. And 



290 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PEIL080PEY 

speaking literally, neither individuals nor nations 
can both stand still and move forward at one and 
the same time. But neither individuals nor nations 
can be really stable without making progress — 
especially in these later days and as coming under 
the stimulation and the dangers of modern com- 
petition and rivalries. But the difficult problem is 
to know just how fast and how far to move in any 
proposed direction, and in what particular direc- 
tion, among a number possible, to inaugurate and 
continue the movement. This is a problem which 
only education can solve. And the solution must 
not be merely theoretical; the knowledge of when, 
what way and how far to go, must be followed by 
actual movement. Otherwise there can be neither 
stability nor progress. The education which solves 
this problem must be practical ; that is, it must re- 
sult in the moving of the will and in the control 
of conduct, under the influence of moral ideals. 
Today, Russia is much less stable than Germany, 
or Great Britain; and South America than North 
America; and this is chiefly because the former 
have been much less progressive than the latter. 
And much as the wonderfully rapid movement into 
new and strange ways may seem to threaten its 
stability. Japan is, in fact, more stable in every 
way than is the hitherto comparatively immovable 
Empire of China. It is not for stagnation, but for 
progress that we are pleading when we inquire: 



TEE NATIONAL STABILITY AND PROGRESS 291 

What are some of the evils that have been grown 
by our rapid progress, for which education may af- 
ford some mitigation, if not a complete cure? 

Of such evils I have selected for a brief dis- 
cussion of each the following five: superstition, 
lawlessness, partizanship, avarice and ambition, and 
irreverence. These evils are all connected with the 
rapid pace at which we have been moving forward ; 
if they do not grow directly out of it. The most 
hopeful of the remedies which can be proposed for 
them all must be somehow found and administered 
by our system of education. 

It may seem strange that I connect the evil of 
superstition in any way with that characteristic of 
being inordinately *'fast," which not unjustly 
attaches to us as a people. And it must be admitted 
that the connection here is rather subtle, and even, 
apparently, somewhat artificial. But let me call 
your attention to these incontestable facts. We 
have been exceedingly and even appallingly rapid 
about receiving not only into the social whole, but 
also into the body politic, millions of the most 
superstitious immigrants from Europe. In our 
greed to get rich quick, through the production of 
cotton, we have bred on our own soil millions more 
of superstitious negroes, and in our injudicious 
haste at re-construction we endowed them all in the 
lump, as it were, with the responsibilities and 
rights of citizenship. The result is that today 



292 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

there are large sections of the United States where 
the majority of the population are little, if any, 
less superstitious than in Spain, Southern Italy, or 
even Central Africa. And we are just now com- 
ing to the somewhat more full realization of the 
truth of fact that the only hope of mitigating, not 
to say curing this enormous evil, lies in greatly 
strengthening the forces of education. 

Ignorance, in general and truly, has been de- 
clared to be a menace to the stability and the prog- 
ress of the Republic. But there are certain forms 
of ignorance which are relatively passive and inert ; 
they may even operate for the time being in a con- 
servative way. But the forms of ignorance rep- 
resented by the superstitions of multitudes of 
people, are, many of them, ready at any time to 
become violently active and destructive of property 
and of life. Such are those which oppose them- 
selves to the measures necessary for the material 
and sanitary welfare of the people. We may take 
a lesson from the experience of the British Govern- 
ment in India. When, some years ago, the bubonic 
plague broke out in the city of Bombay, the Gov- 
ernment at first tried to enforce those measures to 
stamp it out promptly, which are recognized as 
necessary by the civilized world. But they were 
defeated by the gross superstitions of the native 
populace, who attributed the origin of the plague to 
the wrath of the goddess. Queen Victoria, over the 



THE NATIONAL STABILITY AND PR0GBE88 293 

insult done to her statue by some miscreant hav- 
ing daubed it with cow-dung, and who believed that 
when their husbands, brothers and sons were taken 
away to plague camps and never came back again, 
the English had murdered them and used their 
blood to cement bridges. Much the same thing 
has the Japanese Government in Korea success- 
fully coped with in its efforts to enforce vaccina- 
tion and to stamp out the cholera in the city of 
Seoul. And has not the news come to us that the 
inhabitants of Southern Italy have had to be pre- 
vented by the military from mobbing foreign mis- 
sionaries suspected of being responsible for the re- 
cent earthquake? 

I presume we flatter ourselves that under simi- 
lar trying circumstances we should escape from 
similar fruits of superstition. But I am not by any 
means sure that experience would bear out our 
opinion of our superiority in this regard. Given 
the exciting causes, with the same intensity, in 
certain parts of the country, and I am tolerably 
sure that it would not. 

It is in the sphere of religious belief and practise 
that a certain class of superstitions is most 
threatening and most difficult to combat by any 
other than the forces of education. What is to 
be done if, in the name of religion, superstition 
organizes itself to prevent measures for securing 
the public against the ravages of infectious 



294 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

diseases, or the more subtle but no less dangerous 
ravages of medical malpractise? What shall be 
done when in the name of religion, superstition 
sanctions and encourages polygamy and other 
forms of illicit lust; or aims to weaken or dissolve 
the marriage tie, by appeal to some occult doctrine 
of spiritual affinities? Make laws against these 
evil fruits of spreading superstition, indeed, we 
must, and if possible, enforce, after we have en- 
acted them. But suppose that the superstitions, 
for lack of strength to the forces of education, 
spread until a large minority, not to say a ma- 
jority, of the people come to hold them ; what, then, 
that is feasible and profitable can be done simply 
by law-making ? Even now we have not room enough 
in our jails and prisons to accommodate one- 
fourth of the number who would be condemned to 
them if only the law-making were rigidly enforced. 
We can not punish superstitious people by the mil- 
lion, even though the working of their superstitions 
is very harmful to the public good ; but we can, it 
may be, if we work hard and rapidly enough, edu- 
cate them. And this is what we must do. For 
letting in the light through education, rather than 
inactive unbelief, or denunciation, or stern sup- 
pression by law, is the only sovereign remedy. 

Lawlessness, or the spirit of disregard for the 
law, when carried out so as to become a wide- 
spreading habit of breaking the law, strikes a di- 



TEW NATIONAL STABILITY AND PBOGBESS 295 

rect and forceful blow at the very foundations of 
national stability. But education tends to counter- 
act and remedy lawlessness in at least two impor- 
tant ways. It tends more and more to secure laws 
which, for their justice and successful working, 
command the respect and cheerful allegiance of the 
people. This it does by making the law-makers 
wise as to what laws have a character to entitle 
them to the popular respect and loyal obedience, 
and also by disposing them, in spite of selfish and 
partizan interests to the contrary, to enact such 
laws. It is one of the saddest and most threatening 
of political facts, that such a large proportion of 
the laws now in force, and so much of the enor- 
mous annual increase of legislation, does not com- 
mend itself to the good sense and moral convic- 
tions of the great body of the people. Indeed, it 
is a serious question whether some of the principles 
which we have come to regard as fundamental and 
which were formerly interpreted so as to conserve 
the ends of justice and the interests of the public 
good, are not now so interpreted and enforced as to 
thwart those ends and jeopardize those interests. 
Laws procured by undue forms of influence, laws 
that are intended to work in favor of privileged in- 
dividual corporations, laws that are well-inten- 
tioned, but are marred or spoiled by the ignorance 
and illiteracy of those who have framed them, laws 
that from their inception are in favor of dishonesty 



296 THE TEACBER'B PRACTICAL PHILOSOPBY 

and injustice, abound on all our statute books. 
And the sinister levity with which the public has 
come to look upon this sort of legislation is shown 
by calling these measures ''jokers" and by stigma- 
tizing those few who try to expose them as "muck- 
rakers." Still further, there can be little doubt 
that our courts of law, both high and low, whether 
in large measure justly, or for the most part un- 
justly, are believed not to be beyond reproach either 
for the legality of their decisions or for the rea- 
sonableness of their way of arriving at them. And 
it is a well-known fact that in certain classes of 
claims it is difficult or impossible for the poor to 
get their case fairly tried, not to say, fairly decided. 
It is, of course, evident that evils inherent in 
the very system of law-making, or in its results, 
can not easily be remedied by making more laws, 
by the same persons and under the same influences. 
But we must look to educative influences, which 
are strongly ethical in their character and which 
are suffused with a zeal for righteousness, to assist 
in remedying the evils that are leading to such dis- 
respect for the law of the land. When we can edu- 
cate the people so that they will demand just laws 
in the interests of the public good, and will know 
just laws when they see them, and will no longer 
think it wise and right to tolerate private bills and 
class legislation; then and not until then will this 
evil of lawlessness be greatly mitigated, if it does 



TEE NATIONAL STABILITY AND PROGRESS 297 

not wholly cease. For the people simply will not 
enduringly and loyally obey laws which they do not 
believe to be wise and just. 

But education tends toward the cure of lawless- 
ness, because it directly fosters a law-abiding spirit 
in the breast of the citizen; and it both shows him 
how to subordinate, duly, his own opinions and 
practises to the majesty of the law, and also in- 
duces him to sacrifice freely private interests to 
the public good. There are not a few cases under 
every system of government, where the laws, even 
when they express fairly well the average sense 
of justice, do not correspond with the moral ideals 
of the morally most advanced portion of the nation. 
In such cases it is often necessary for the more in- 
telligent and upright few to submit to injustice 
rather than transgress the law. Where the law 
seems to work injustice to others rather than to 
themselves, it is harder for conscientious men to 
decide what to do. No amount of education can 
tell to the citizen just precisely how in all cases he 
should solve such problems as these; but the right 
kind of education can impart the spirit of obedi- 
ence to the laws, and also some of the practical 
judgment necessary to right conduct in the effort 
to obey them. Other things being at all equal, it 
is the educated nation which is wise in making, 
and loyal in keeping, the law of the land; and 
which is, therefore, at once stable and progressive. 



298 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

Partizanship is another evil, which when it be- 
comes aggressive and violent, as the partizan spirit 
tends especially to become in all democratic forms 
of government, threatens the very foundations of 
the stability of the state. Parties, and party con- 
tests, are inevitable in every form of government. 
In the most autocratic or bureaucratic forms of 
government they are by no means absent ; but they 
are often more pernicious and dangerous, because 
their membership and plans are more concealed, 
and their resort is more exclusively to intrigue 
and corruption. In all constitutional and demo- 
cratic forms of government, parties are the legiti- 
mate, and they should be the avowed and open 
means of forming the collective opinion of the 
people as to the wisest and best governmental meas- 
ures, and of expressing the will of the people ac- 
cording to the opinions they have formed. Parties, 
then, are important means of economic and politi- 
cal education. Their chief value consists in their 
being educative forces. 

But partizanship tends to defeat the most im- 
portant and serviceable uses of political parties. 
The appeals it makes are not in the interests of 
educated opinion; neither do they tend, except by 
way of wholesome reaction, to the weighing of facts 
or the forming of judgments upon a basis of facts. 
Divisions into parties, that are not founded in in- 
telligent, honest and unselfish difference of views 



TEE NATIONAL STABILITY AND PROGRESS 299 

on questions of public policy, but are rather man- 
aged for the securing of private aims and the lion's 
share of the spoil, run riot in the spirit of partizan- 
ship, as a matter of course. And when this spirit 
has come to dominate any party, no matter what 
its name or how good may have been the political 
principles on which it was founded, it becomes a 
force that threatens the very foundations of na- 
tional stability and progress. 

Education, where it includes, not only a knowl- 
edge of economical and political principles, but 
also training in the virtues of sympathy, fraternal 
feeling, moderation and self-control, abates or re- 
moves the partizan spirit. This it does by mak- 
ing each understand and appreciate the views and 
interests of the other, no matter how much they 
differ from his own; and also by showing to each, 
what measure of real truth belongs to the party 
of the other, to the party to which he does not 
himself belong. 

To illustrate by the case where, in this country 
at the present time, there are dominant on two 
opposed sides the most bitter and dangerous stir- 
rings of the spirit of partizanship ; I refer to the 
spirit which dominates so much of the so-called 
*' labor party" on the one hand and on the other 
hand controls with an equal lack of regard for con- 
sequences and of sympathy that portion of the two 
great national parties which has the interests of 



300 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

capital in charge. Wlio can doubt that relief from 
the partizan strife, which is so mischievous to the 
great majority of the people who are not partizans 
of either of the two, will come when capital and 
labor both know enough and are moral enough to 
understand and to appreciate the rights and inter- 
ests of each other? 

For there is some measure of truth in all con- 
tentions which can for any length of time hold, 
together a collection of just fairly reasonable and 
well-intentioned human beings. We have as a na- 
tion suffered much from this selfish and ignoble 
spirit of partizanship, the successful working of 
which in any political or ecclesiastical party implies 
that it is much too largely a collection of hypocrites 
and ignoramuses. But there are just now hopeful 
signs of great improvement, even if — which is 
scarcely possible — the hour of complete deliverance 
is not at hand. Education begets a spirit of intelli- 
gent and sympathetic compromise. Such com- 
promise will not sacrifice truth and honest convic- 
tions. But it assumes the higher point of view, 
which aims to include the considerations that will 
secure the greatest good for the greatest number. 
It is generous in the sacrifice of private interests. 

That selfish avarice and ambition have developed 
to a threatening extent and are working to under- 
mine the foundations of our national stability and 
progress, is a proposition which few would deny 



TEE NATIONAL STABILITY AND PROGRESS 301 

who have carefully watched and duly estimated 
the spirit of the most recent times. Here seems 
to be something with which the enactment and en- 
forcement of laws can cope more successfully than 
with so intangible evils as the spirit of lawlessness 
or the spirit of partizanship. I need not describe 
this evil to you with any detail. You know how 
powerful and pervasive it is through the length 
and breadth of the Commonwealth. But the fur- 
ther evil that it bodes is not at all popularly recog- 
nized or duly estimated. I remember perfectly 
w^ell when, for a man to be rich for those days, was 
of itself a sort of title to the respect and confidence 
of his fellow-citizens. Now, there are millions of 
our populace who hate the rich and politically 
powerful, and even the so-called ''respectable"; 
just because they are rich, powerful and respect- 
able; and who are cherishing the sullen or bitter 
feeling that Church and State are in league against 
them to keep them down. This feeling can not 
be cured by law. But it may be mitigated and con- 
trolled, and even extirpated, by an education which 
does away with its sources in a too rank and riot- 
ous exhibition of selfish avarice and ambition. 

Irreverence is another of those evils which de- 
mand the therapeutics of education. History 
shows us plainly that an irreligious and frivolous 
spirit among the citizens at large endangers the 
very life of the State. It shows us that the remedy 



302 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

for the evils of superstition is not irreligion, but 
it is quite the opposite. It is, the rather, a spirit 
of reasonable reverence — a certain feeling of awe 
and mystery, a submission of will, a view of life 
and of duty and of destiny, which is the opposite 
of that from which irreverence springs. It is the 
work of education to foster such an enlightened 
and reasonable spirit of reverence, and to substi- 
tute it for the superstitiousness with which the 
ignorant so often confound it. 

It requires no particular detailed application of 
the truths we have just been examining to dis- 
cover how important is the work of the teachers of 
any nation in counteracting these disturbing forces, 
and so in contributing positively to the establish- 
ment on firm foundations of the edifice of the 
State. For it is the effort of education to substi- 
tute, for superstition, enlightenment; for lawless- 
ness, which is so often chiefly caused by the enact- 
ment, under sinister influences, of unwise and un- 
just laws, a pervasive respect for and spirit of 
obedience to the law; for the partizan views and 
spirit, broad views and a spirit of union and of 
sympathy between the different classes ; for selfish- 
ness and intriguing ambition, patriotism and a 
supreme regard for the public welfare; and for 
the degrading spirit of frivolity, the uplifting sen- 
timent of reverence. 

I began the consideration of this subject by say- 



TEE NATIONAL STABILITY AND PROGRESS 303 

ing that stability in the affairs of government must 
not be confounded with stagnation, or even with 
that excess of so-called "conservatism," which op- 
poses progress on the sole ground that progress 
involves, at times, seemingly rapid and radical 
changes. But that progress which is compatible 
with stability and is indeed the condition of the 
truest stability, is movement at the right time, 
right place and in the right direction. Such prog- 
ress can be secured only as a result of the educa- 
tion of the body of the people. 

The different ways in which education operates 
to secure the economic, social and moral advance of 
the national life have been mentioned and suffi- 
ciently illustrated. I wish now, therefore, to add 
a few suggestions on one point only. The educa- 
tion which is to serve the cause of national prog- 
ress must be itself progressive. The various means 
employed and institutions founded, whether under 
the control of the State or provided by private en- 
terprise, must be ever striving to improve them- 
selves if they are to furnish educative opportuni- 
ties to a progressive people. The system of educa- 
tion must be both prompt and wise to adapt itself 
to the exigencies of the times, to the changing needs 
of the people, not only in their more strictly eco- 
nomic and social, but also in their political rela- 
tions. It must be progressive in training citizens 
for the progress of the State. 



304 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

The rapid and extreme alterations in the equip- 
ment, curricula, personnel, aims and achievements 
of the higher institutions of learning and to a les- 
ser extent of the secondary and primary schools 
of the country, have borne witness to a keen and 
widespreading feeling of appreciation of the ne- 
cessity which devolves upon the nation at large. 
Strenuous and almost frantic efforts have been 
made to demonstrate a priori what these changes 
ought to be; and millions of money have been 
spent and hundreds of lives sacrificed in attempts 
at the experimental testing of at least a moiety of 
these theories. There was thirty years ago and 
there is still almost universal agreement as to the 
need of extensive changes in the system of educa- 
tion prevailing at that earlier time. But there was 
not then, and there is not now, anything approach- 
ing universal agreement as to precisely how this 
need for change in the direction of progress should 
best be met. There is not even agreement as to 
whether, in some of the most important measures 
demanded in the interest of progress, it has been 
met. And there are some very pertinent signs of 
a tendency to return upon the course and to seek 
for real progress, not exactly along all the old lines, 
but more nearly along some of the old lines. 

I do not feel competent, and I do not believe 
that any one else is or can be competent, to pro- 
nounce beforehand upon just what changes are 



TEE NATIONAL STABILITY AND PROGRESS 305 

necessary to make real progress in our national sys- 
tem of education, so far as we can be said to have 
any system of a national character at all. Some of 
the changes already initiated or partly perfected 
are pretty plainly along lines of real progress; 
others, just as plainly, are not; more than either 
the undoubted successes or the plain failures, are 
the cases still in doubt. The truth, however, which 
I wish now to emphasize is this: The measures 
suitable or necessary to secure real progress in edu- 
cation can not be determined by educationalists 
with pet theories of pedagogy, nor even be evolved 
as lessons from a study of the history of educa- 
tion — although the latter method is, of the two, 
far safer and more promising of helpful results. 
There are, indeed, certain principles which control 
the success or failure of all attempts at education. 
These are of the psychological and ethical order. 
And these principles can never be too thoroughly 
studied, or too firmly grasped and held, or too 
wisely and tactfully applied. There are also cer- 
tain lessons from history in the matter of the 
progress of the race and of the different more en- 
lightened nations, to adopt and to adapt which is 
the most serviceable and effective means for se- 
curing the welfare of the State, thru the education 
of at least a part of her citizens. But there are no 
examples of a great and rapidly growing Eepublic 
like our own trying to change its measures and de- 
velop its equipment so as to meet the demands of 



306 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

popular education, under economic and social and 
political changes so inconceivably rapid and enor- 
mously great as are the changes going on in this 
country at the present time. And even if our his- 
tory at the present time were much more nearly 
than it can be held to be, a sort of repetition of 
the educational experience of some other nation in 
the past, I very much doubt whether a study of 
these resemblances wotild yield the organized and 
detailed solution of our present-day problems, or 
even any considerable approach to such a solution. 
Progress in educational methods can be attained 
only by a large and continuous use of the method 
of experimentation. It is chiefly by trial that the 
testing of the merit of educational systems is ulti- 
mately obtained. And when I use the word "ulti- 
mately," I do not mean that any one trial or series 
of trials can try out any system or any methods, so 
that in all the future no changes will need to be made 
in it, in the interests of further progress. For cease- 
less development is the law of progress in educa- 
tion, as it is in nature and in all great human af- 
fairs. On the other hand, nothing is more sure to 
check or to mislead all efforts at a real advance 
than the spirit of unthinking restlessness and dis- 
satisfaction, with its clamor for change. Change of 
text-books, change of teachers, change of methods, 
even change of school-rooms and lecture halls, are 
all inevitably accompanied by a certain amount of 
disturbance and of loss. Change of every sort re- 



TEE NATIONAL STABILITY AND PROGRESS 307 

quires a certain expenditure of energy, over and 
above that which results in work, just to make the 
change. And this fact should always be counted 
upon in reckoning the net sum to be gained by the 
effort to effect any particular change. 

The general conclusion from this apparent side- 
excursion leads us back to the thought which I 
have aimed to make prominent in this entire course 
of lectures. It is the personal character and equip- 
ment of the class of teachers employed by any 
system, to which so much must be referred, when 
we are trying to discover what is real progress, 
and what not; what is the best system and what 
are the best methods to be adopted and encouraged 
for promoting thru education the stability and 
progress of the State. Every teacher who con- 
tributes anything to the progress of education 
makes in that way a valuable contribution to the 
national progress. But more especially, every 
teacher who becomes a discoverer or an expert au- 
thority in any branch of human science, art, litera- 
ture or reflective thinking, becomes an especially 
valuable factor in the progressive national life. 

And finally, no substitute for education is pos- 
sible as the safeguard of national stability and na- 
tional progress. Enlargement of the imperial do- 
main is no such substitute. A certain fixed terri- 
tory over which the State has control is necessary 
for its very existence. Enlargement of this terri- 
tory may become desirable or even necessary for 



308 THE TEACEER'8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

national progress. But mere geographical great- 
ness can never make a stable and progressive State. 
On the contrary, unless the people are enlightened, 
the bigger the territory the bigger the risk. Little 
Holland and little Switzerland are more stable and 
more progressive than great Russia or great China. 

Increase of wealth can not take the place of edu- 
cation in securing the stability and progress of 
the State. Today, more than ever before, perhaps, 
progress undoubtedly lies along lines of economic 
expansion and the accumulation of wealth. And 
there are many who would, I think mistakenly, con- 
tend that even national stability depends upon the 
financial ability to build many expensive battle- 
ships and to finance expensive wars. But the ac- 
cumulation of wealth in comparatively few hands, 
by fraud, injustice, or selfish grasping, is now the 
chief menace to internal peace and to peace be- 
tween nations, and so to the stability and progress 
of all nations. 

Even wise government, where it is possible with- 
out the education of the whole people is not suffi- 
cient to insure the stability and progress of any 
State, no matter how skilfully and elaborately its 
structure may seem to be compacted. In order 
that the nation may go forward without internal, 
destructive revolt, and without imported disaster, 
the people must be enlightened and disciplined by 
the intellectual and moral forces wielded by the 
national system of education. 



LECTURE XV 

THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY: 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 

I have little doubt that in this course of lectures 
I have sometimes seemed to you to wander far 
afield, and to be considering subjects which are 
only rather remotely connected with the daily work 
and pressing practical tasks of the teacher's life. 
Perhaps, however, on reflection over what has been 
said on these subjects you may discover more 
numerous and vital points of connection with these 
tasks and their problems than was at first apparent. 
However this may be, I am now proposing to return 
to the thought which gave us our original place of 
departure, and to some of its more immediate and 
obvious applications. And this I wish to do in 
such manner as to reveal more clearly and to em- 
phasize more strongly the Importance and the Dig- 
nity of the teacher's work. For I regard it as one 
of the chief perils of our national education that so 
many influences are at work which tend, either 
directly or indirectly, to diminish the self-respect 
and the respect of the community for the individ- 
ual teacher; and so to lower the ideals, diminish 
the spiritual influence and degrade the public esti- 
mate, of the profession of the teacher. 



310 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

In my effort to clarify and enforce the considera- 
tions which support a high estimate of the dignity 
and importance of the teacher's work, let me pass 
briefly in review thoughts which have been ex- 
pressed at length in each of the four divisions under 
which I have treated the general theme. This will 
lead me to say, first, that the importance and dig- 
nity of the teacher's work are emphasized by the 
very nature of that work. The function of the 
teacher secures him at once an important and dig- 
nified place in the community. This is true because 
this very function is, essentially regarded, one of 
the highest and most efficient forms of personal 
intercourse. It is more comprehensive than ordi- 
nary domestic or friendly intercourse; it is more 
close-fitting and intimate than political and business 
intercourse ; it is more apt to be free from certain 
embarrassments than is the former, while being 
more permanent and effective in its relation to 
individuals than is the latter. 

But the importance and dignity of the teacher's 
function are further enhanced by the fact that it 
lies so near to all the springs of human action, as 
these springs are related to the life and growth of 
both the individual and the community. As stim- 
ulating interest in subjects that have worth for 
human attainment, and as imparting knowledge 
upon these subjects; as training the human facul- 
ties for their most fit and efficient action, and 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 31 i 

especially as forming the character of those whom 
this function reaches, the work of the teacher is 
one of the most important and dignified— if it 
is not the most important and dignified— of all 
human activities. 

The importance and dignity of the teacher's office 
is further manifest in the nature of the equip- 
ment demanded for the work of teaching. To have 
it one's duty, one's express form of life and activ- 
ity in life, one's daily employment, to cultivate 
a character, safe to be copied and worthy of imi- 
tation by the young, and to acquire knowledge, not 
only in order to possess it oneself, but also to impart 
it freely to others— this is a manner of life which 
princes and angels might covet. 

The proper ideals of the teacher are also such as 
to impart the highest significance and dignity to 
his professional work. It is largely by the worth 
and dynamic quality of their ideals that the value 
of the life-work of different men is most fairly to 
be judged. But the expressly defined ideals of the 
teacher are not to gain wealth and power for him- 
self ; they are, the rather, to promote the welfare of 
those committed to his influence, to advance and 
disseminate knowledge, and to strengthen, elevate 
and purify society. No ideals that give more of 
importance and dignity to one's life-work can be 
partially realized, or even imagined, under the 
existing conditions of human society, than those 



312 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

expressly adopted by the intelligent and conscien- 
tious professional teacher. 

And when we come to consider the historical and 
the actual relations in which the educational sys- 
tem of any people stands to its social welfare and 
social development, and to the stability and pro- 
gress of the same people as organized, for purposes 
of self-government, into a State, the argument to 
establish the supreme importance of the teacher's 
work of instruction and discipline, becomes com- 
plete. This sort of work is the distinctive work 
of the class of professional teachers. The work of 
"education," in the more comprehensive meaning 
of the word, is secondary, incidental, subsidiary, 
with most other employments and professions ; with 
the professional teacher, it is primary, permanent, 
and essential. 

I have already made a sort of indirect reference 
to the witness which might be invoked from history 
as to the importance and dignity of the teacher's 
work. Every age is apt to select for its attention 
and attribution of greatness, that particular form 
of activity of which it feels most imperative need. 
Is it a stage of civilization— or, rather, a stage of 
barbarism— where war is the regular and chief 
emplojrment of the tribe or the nation? Then the 
warrior chief, or the successful general, is the 
great man, the hero, the one deemed most worthy 
of esteem and acclaim for his superior worth. And 



8UMMART AND CONCLUSION 313 

when, in the national development, the time comes 
for defense by arms of the national life, such work 
of military skill and prowess is justly held in the 
greatest honor. 

When political organization or control is the 
chief interest— real or fancied— of the people, then 
the work of the lawmaker or the statesman seems 
most important and dignified. "When material 
resources are the standard for estimating— or 
greatly distorting the truth of the estimate — of 
men, as they certainly are in this so-called ** com- 
mercial age" ; then the successful merchant, banker, 
manufacturer, or manipulator of stocks, is sure to 
acquire a quite exaggerated importance and dig- 
nity. How significant from this point of view, and 
how suggestive of false standards for estimating 
values, are such designations as these: ''merchant 
princes,'' ''lumber kings,'' "coal barons," and 
"lordly bankers!" 

But all the while, in the various lands where 
civilization has developed, or the springs of a 
higher race-culture are to be found, the fact of his- 
tory remains the same: Among all nations, it has 
teen the teacher who, of all classes of the people, 
has exercised the most important and lasting in- 
fluence for good upon the development of the race. 
In one word, the world owes more to its great 
teachers than to any other class of men. 

Indeed, fellow teachers, when I consider the 



314 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

exaggerated importance, whicli is arrogated to 
themselves, and which is so generally accorded to 
our successful politicians and business men, with- 
out inquiring at all carefully into the means by 
which success has been attained, as judged from 
the point of view of the moral law or of its rela- 
tions to the public welfare, I am forced to regard 
it as a signal indication of our vulgarity and of 
the lowness in the stage of the civilization to which 
we, as a people, have as yet attained. After all, 
however, it is the silent, everflowing and every- 
where permeating influences that continue to come 
from the forces of instruction and discipline which 
a few great individuals, by the way of personal 
example and of doctrine, have exercised, that have 
done most to elevate and bless the race. Were it not 
for the conserving influence of these few great 
teachers, no one can tell how much of destruction 
the forces of selfish avarice and ambition might 
have wrought, above all that which they confessedly 
have done to corrupt and to destroy. These con- 
servers of humanity ^s highest interests have all 
been men who reflected upon the significance of 
life, and upon duty and upon destiny, from the 
higher points of view and as seen in the light of 
immortal ideals. They believed in the supremacy of 
morality, in the trustworthiness of reason, in the 
reality of the invisible and spiritual, in the duty 
and the beauty of unselfish devotion, and in the 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 315 

final triumph of the Good; witness: Confucius, 
Mencius, Sakya-Muni, Moses, Socrates, Plato, Paul, 
and Jesus, as chief among many others. 

The very laws which control the historical devel- 
opment of the race are such as to enhance the 
importance and dignity of the teacher's work. If 
the teacher's day always has been, and is now, a 
working day, full of important and dignified work 
for humanity's sake; it is yet more true that the 
teacher's greater day is in the future. We can 
not tell alas ! how much longer war will sometimes 
be necessary on the part of those nations which do 
not seek it, but are forced into it by the aggression 
of other nations, and in their own just self-defense. 
But it must become far less frequent in the future, 
or real civilization can not advance. We can not 
tell what will be the limit to the growth of wealth 
in comparatively few hands, or what wild schemes 
of a nihilistic or a socialistic redistribution of the 
good things of life may temporarily prevail. But 
we know that there must be some limit ; and there 
are some indications that the limit can not be so 
very far away. There is no limit to be set, how- 
ever, to the possible mental and moral improve- 
ment of society, under the influences from an 
improved instruction and discipline of the people 
at large. Instruction and discipline are the work 
of the teachers of the people, especially of the public 
schools. Therefore the call for the uplifting of 



316 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

their influence and the improvement of their work 
is an unceasing and ever louder call. 

All these considerations are much intensified and 
reinforced by the condition of the public education 
in this country at the present time. It is beyond 
dispute that this condition is laboring under many 
deficiencies which need to be supplied, and not a 
few serious evils which require to be remedied. I 
do not propose to discuss or even to mention these 
with any fulness of detail; for besides the fact 
that this last lecture would afford neither the proper 
place nor the adequate space for such an attempt, 
there is the other fact of my desire to end the 
whole course of lectures with words of encourage- 
ment and good-cheer rather than with words of 
faultfinding and discouragement. And in truth, 
the deficiencies and evils of the present system of 
education do reasonably serve to enhance our esti- 
mate of the importance, and even of the dignity of 
the work for the professional teacher. Just as the 
class who make and enforce the laws must be chiefly 
looked to for an improved condition of legislation, 
and of obedience to law, on the part of the country 
at large ; and just as the removal of the many dis- 
honest and mean practises rife in the business of 
the country must be expected and demanded 
chiefly from the men and women who are them- 
selves engaged in this business; so the supply of 
educational deficiencies and the remedy of the edu- 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 317 

cational evils of the country must be mainly sought 
and required of the men and women who are the 
professional '^ educators" of the country. No one 
else can accomplish much improvement, if the 
teachers of the nation do not take an eager interest 
and lend a helping hand. Indeed, when this class 
are themselves improved in wisdom, efficiency, and 
character, then the improvement of the system of 
education is not only ensured in the near future, 
but it is even already in large measure accom- 
plished. To get better and still better teachers is 
the main part of the problem of our national sys- 
tem of education. 

It will help our argument, however, to spend a 
few minutes with each one of several particulars. 
The one principal cause and most marked result 
of the deficiencies and evils to which reference has 
been made, is the uncertain and disordered condi- 
tion of the system itself. Some such complete 
upsetting of the old curricula, the old methods, the 
old ideas and ideals, was made inevitable by the 
events of the last half -century. During these fifty 
years there has been a rapid introduction and devel- 
opment of almost wholly new subjects, about which 
it is thought necessary that the average citizen 
should know something ; and should have a chance, 
if he will improve it, to know much more. During 
the same time there has been going on an almost 
equally complete change in the estimates of the 



318 TEE TEACHER'S PRAGTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

value of the different subjects which should enter 
into the most approved system, both elementary and 
higher, of the public system of education. All 
this has resulted in a friendly but eager rivalry, 
or an unsympathetic and bitter contention, between 
different studies and between the advocates and 
teachers of different studies ; and this, in its turn, 
has added still further to the disintegration, dis-, 
order and confusion of the entire system. Indeed, 
it is doubtful whether, at present, it can be called 
a system at all. 

Meantime, the population of the country has 
been growing rapidly; and many millions of this 
'growth have consisted of uneducated and even 
grossly ignorant foreigners from Southern and Cen- 
tral Eastern Europe. To assimilate and improve 
these educationally, has severely taxed the resources 
of every kind— especially the resources of men and 
women out of which to provide the teachers for 
these needy multitudes. The largely increased cost 
of everything necessary to furnishing an adequate 
equipment for the public education, and the rea- 
sonable necessity for considerable increases in the 
salaries of the teachers, as well as the not so rea- 
sonable disinclination of those best fitted, to enter 
the profession of teaching because its social and 
financial rewards are not equally attractive with 
those of business or of the other professions — all 
these, and other causes, have rendered it increas- 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 319 

ingly diffie^ilt to make the supply of the material 
for an efficient system of education keep pace with 
the demand from the rapid growth of an unedu- 
cated population. Besides, in the older parts of 
the country the movements of the population into 
the cities and into the newer parts of the land, 
have left these parts with enfeebled and deterio- 
rated district schools as well as village churches. 
As a result, neither churches nor schools are, in 
many places, serving their day and generation so 
well as they were twenty-five and fifty years ago. 
To meet effectively the needs of a good modern 
education, and to bring order again out of this 
confusion, many of the best men and women in 
the teaching profession have been thinking hard 
and working with all their might. Since the first 
real signs for hope and encouragement must come 
in this way, the fact that the evils and deficiencies 
are being now so generally recognized, and that the 
way to take them in hand is being so eagerly 
debated, is a highly welcome fact. I shall take no 
part in the criminations and recriminations which 
are going on between the high-schools and the col- 
leges, or between the advocates of a public system 
which lays most emphasis on manual training and 
those who stand for the spread amongst the whole 
people of the benefits of a liberal culture. There 
are some evils about which we may all be agreed. 
And these are the worst and most widely prevalent. 



320 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

There are some improvements in conditions, 
methods, and results, to which we may all make at 
least some slight contribution; and about the way 
to secure which, it would seem that we might come 
to some sort of agreement, within a reasonable time, 
if not at once. 

Chief among such evils, in my judgment, is the 
intolerable amount of cramming, and the insane 
demand for marks, and confidence in marks, which 
has almost everywhere seized upon and dominated 
our system of education. To remedy this evil its 
causes must be removed. And so far as I am able 
to discover, these causes are chiefly the following 
three: The inordinate number of subjects, or rather 
of studies, which are crowded into the required 
work of all the stages of education — primary, 
secondary and higher ; second, the lack of adequate 
means for separating between those who are ca- 
pable of doing well the required amount of work 
within the allotted time and those who are not 
capable; and, third, the fact that, in continuing 
any particular study, or line of studies, the pupil 
is passed from teacher to teacher, differing in their 
personal characteristics, their requirements, their 
methods, their favorite text-books and pet theories, 
^hat wonder that in the pupil's mind, with this 
confusion of ways of getting at truths of fact and 
truths of opinion, there results a state of confusion 
worse confounded? 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 321 

Almost inseparably and, I fear in its practical 
working, quite inevitably, there are connected with 
this evil of cramming, some forms of exceedingly 
grave moral evil. If shallowness and pretense of 
knowledge, where real knowledge does not exist, is 
a moral evil — and I believe that it is — then it can 
not be denied that much of this sort of immorality 
on the part of both teachers and pupils results 
from the demand for a multitude of studies with- 
out thoroness in a few. [Worse still, there is the 
almost irresistible temptation — at least on the 
pupil 's part — to meet the requirements of the daily 
recitation or of the examination paper, by resort 
to some kind of unfair or dishonest means of help. 

It can not be said, however, that these evils are 
due wholly to the disturbed condition of our sys- 
tem of education, much less that they are chiefly 
the fault of those who have this system committed 
to their charge. They are, the rather, the ex- 
pression in matters of education, of the same na- 
tional evils that have invaded and so largely influ- 
enced, if they have not actually captured and domi- 
nated our system of politics, our system of business, 
and even to some extent the management of our 
institutions of religion. What wonder that the 
children will lie about their studies when their 
parents are so little regardful of the truth in their 
political affiliations or their social relations ? What 
wonder that the children will cheat, if they get the 



322 THE TEACHEB'8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

chance, when they know that their elders are so 
extensively given to cheating or being cheated with 
false weights and measures in the markets and 
shops of the city and the village, or from the carts 
of the peddlers and the wagons of the farmers? 
What wonder that the boys and girls of the public 
schools, and the young ladies and gentlemen in our 
colleges and universities, are so little regardful of 
the laws of the institutions of which they are mem- 
bers when disregard and even open contempt for 
the laws of the land is so rife with the people of the 
land ? And why should not the sons and daughters 
of so many of the wealthy be interested in athletics 
or in dancing rather than in their studies, if so 
many of their mothers are so passionately in- 
terested in bridge whist or in automobiling, and 
their fathers in gambling in stocks and grain, or 
in the meetings of their clubs rather than the moral 
and intellectual discipline of their own children, 
not to speak of the nation at large. 

But I come back from these unwelcome, tho 
urgent, topics for our reflective thought to the 
theme of the importance and the dignity of the 
work of the professional teacher. For, when 
rightly considered, the deficiencies and evils fur- 
nish our more emphatic call to the doing of duty, 
and our more promising opportunity for an influ- 
ence, in kind and breadth, worthy of our highest 
endeavor. For, however dark the hour is, it is our 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 323 

hour of call to duty and of promise of opportunity. 
But, in reality, the hour is by no means wholly 
dark; on the contrary, it is distinctly the hour of 
a dawn that gives promise of growing into the 
full light of a fine day. All periods of rapid 
change and great transition are, of necessity, 
periods of seeming disintegration and disorder. In 
a nation where there is no central authority in con- 
trol, which can quickly arrange its ideas and wishes 
into some sort of unity and express its will in the 
form of some well-defined policy, periods of disin- 
tegration and disorder, whether in politics, busi- 
ness or religious belief and practise, are more obvi- 
ous, if less dangerous, and seem to require much 
more of debate, of fuss, of contention and of delay, 
in their effort to reach a succeeding period of ac- 
ceptable readjustment. 

But the interest of the nation in the education of 
the whole people is very real ; and because it is the 
education of the whole people, this interest is the 
more likely to be permanent and to extend to the 
entire body of the people. The devising and the 
testing of measures for its improvement, however, 
and the regulation of text-books and methods and 
examinations and other ways of discovering 
whether the individual is worthy of promotion, 
will probably continue to be left to the decision of 
the professional educators. In a word, the work 
of teaching will probably become less and less a 



324 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

temporary makeshift for earning a decent living, 
and more and more a profession chosen for a life- 
time of devoted service. This is, in my judgment, 
a consummation devoutly to be wished. And as it 
is more and more attained, all the larger matters 
affecting the whole educational policy of the na- 
tion, from kindergarten to the graduate and the 
professional schools, will be committed to the body 
of professional teachers. 

The problem of supplying the deficiencies and 
remedying the evils of the existing system of edu- 
cation in this country, therefore, resolves itself 
largely into the question : How shall we manage to 
secure a sufficiently large body of men and women, 
who are well equipped, skilled in practise, with 
high but practicable ideals, and devoted spirits, 
who are willing to follow the life of the professional 
teacher? There are many influences which are 
operating powerfully against the speedy and suc- 
cessful solution of this problem. The falling-off 
in the disciplinary character of the education af- 
forded by many of those institutions of the higher 
learning to which we must look, or at least, to 
which we ought to look, for the preparation of our 
best teachers, is not the least powerful of these 
opposing forces. But the colleges and universities 
are beginning to realize, and to make efforts to 
check, if not wholly to abolish, the more extreme 
evils of a too unlimited election of studies and the 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 825 

too few rigidly enforced exactions of a disciplinary 
curriculum. The public schools of the country are 
probably moving in advance of the colleges and 
universities with measures for mitigating similar 
evils in their own grades of the educational system. 

There is sufficient reason, then, why I should 
utter with a cheerful and somewhat confident voice, 
the closing words with which I wish to set forth 
certain considerations of a practical sort that fol- 
low from my view of the importance and the dig- 
nity of the work of the professional teacher. 

And, first of all, I think that we teachers should 
not infrequently be reminded to maintain and 
even to increase a certain sentiment of self-respect. 
We are constantly under the influence of tempta- 
tions either to lower this sentiment or to convert 
it into self-conceit by placing it upon shallow and 
false grounds. The influences of the spirit of 
commercialism, now current and even rampant, are 
distinctly toward degrading the estimate of the 
value of culture of mind and heart, as such, espe- 
cially in some of the most important fields of cul- 
ture. The same influence can not fail to operate 
for the degradation of the professional standing 
of the teacher. This it does, partly, by attracting 
to itself, in the pursuit of wealth, so many of the 
brighter minds; partly also by keeping down the 
financial and social compensation of the teaching 
profession; and, partly, by depressing the spirit 



326 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

with which so many of the too sensitive minds 
among the class of teachers approach their dutiful 
work. "Only a teacher" is a designation, almost 
an epithet, which many of our number can with 
difficulty learn complacently to bear. But Cou' 
fucius was a teacher, and The Buddha was a 
teacher ; and above all others, Jesus was a teacher. 
No other of the professions — ^not even that of the 
ministry or of the judge of the Supreme Court, 
unless it is made to include the function of teach- 
ing — is comparable, in importance and in dignity, 
with the profession of the teacher. "Only a 
teacher," indeed, but what would you more? For 
the teacher has rather a superior right to be proud 
of his chosen profession, and to think well of him- 
self, in a reasonable way, if he is discharging its 
duties faithfully, as one to whom has been com- 
mitted by the public, in trust, a most important and 
dignified kind of work. 

Following the same line of thinking, and the 
practical suggestions which grow out of it, I am 
quite ready to plead for the cultivation of more 
of a professional spirit — a sort of suitable esprit 
de corps — among the teachers of the land. In ad- 
vising this, I am not meaning to encourage that 
narrow and vain state of mind which is the bane 
of so many class-distinctions. But the work of the 
teacher is, essentially considered, that of a ** learned 
profession"; and those who are engaged in that 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 327 

work should regard and respect it as sucli. More- 
over, the teachers of the country should stand to- 
gether, each with all the others, in all reasonable 
ways, and as representing a common cause that is 
well worthy of upholding. I fear, however, that I 
am not exaggerating, but the rather understating 
the truth, when I confess that petty jealousies and 
unseemly scramblings or secret contrivances to se- 
cure promotion and place ; and too little sympathy 
and too much bitterness in the discussion and prac- 
tical enforcement of conflicting views; and other 
faults of our own — all these causes may be hinder- 
ing the large accession of recognized influence over, 
not only strictly educational, but also over social 
and political and moral affairs, which legitimately 
belongs to the professional teachers in any land. 
Are you aware of what is the social and political 
status of the representatives of the class engaged 
in the active work of education, as accorded by the 
Government of some others of the civilized nations ? 
In Japan, for example, the Minister of Education 
takes rank with all the other ministers — as the 
Minister of th^ Army, the Minister of Justice, etc. ; 
the permanent President of the National Teachers' 
Association is a baron and a member of the House 
of Peers, altho not above superintending the erec- 
tion of a suitable platform for the speakers at any 
of the meetings of the association; the Emperor 
decorates and appoints to positions in the Upper 



328 TEE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHT 

House those who have rendered distinguished ser- 
vices to the nation, in science, literature, phil- 
osophy, or art; and to be called sensi (or 
*' teacher,'' with a strong touch of the New Testa- 
iment meaning of the word ** master,") is a title 
which any one may be proud to bear. I must con- 
fess to a feeling of shock when I was told by one 
present that the memorial service of the late 
United States Commissioner of Education, the Hon. 
William T. Harris, was attended in Washington 
by less than a score of people ; and when I remem- 
bered at the same time how ten thousand followed 
to its burial place, in the rain and on foot, the 
body of the great Japanese teacher, Mr. Fuku- 
zawa, several years ago. To be sure we can not ex- 
pect, and perhaps we ought not to desire any 
precisely similar forms of recognition in this 
country to the importance and dignity of the work 
of the professional teacher. But none the less 
surely is it for our professional advantage, and — 
what is much more important — for the educational 
advantage of the whole people, to maintain a high 
standard of recognition for the worthiness and 
dignity of the class of men and women to whom the 
educational interests of the country are chiefly 
committed. If we understand the scope of educa- 
tion in the way in which I have tried to commend 
the word to your attention during this entire course 
of lectures, we can not conclude otherwise than 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 329 

that the educational interests are the most impor- 
tant interests of the nation at large. 

The securing from the different communities, 
and from the whole nation, of an improved and 
heightened estimate of the importance and the dig- 
iDity of the teacher's work in education is something 
for which it is well worth our while to strive dili- 
gently and persistently. But how shall this desir- 
able result be attained? Of course, so far as the 
individual teacher is concerned, and indeed to a 
considerable extent so far as the whole body of 
teachers is concerned, this must chiefly be done by 
proving the estimate to be needful and correct. 
The community and the State are dependent, far 
more than is realized or is easily made realizable, 
for their welfare and their progress, upon the 
quality of the teachers employed in their public 
schools and in their higher institutions of learning. 
But for the teachers themselves to set out in any 
deliberate and joint effort to make the public 
properly aware of this condition of dependence and 
compel them to acknowledge it in practical ways, 
is to undertake a somewhat delicate and difficult 
job. It is, however, in my judgment, something 
well worth trying for in certain ways. The means 
of which the trades unions, on the one hand, and 
the syndicates and trusts on the other hand, avail 
themselves, to enforce this feeling of dependence, 
are, for the most part, not available by the pro- 



330 THE TEACHER'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 

fessional teachers. And besides, many of these 
measures are not altogether honorable, and not a 
few are distinctly dishonest. Nevertheless, I think 
that the teachers in the public schools and in the 
State universities ought to stand together against 
political influence and political intrigues ; and that 
in our private colleges and universities they ought 
unitedly to resist the President ' ' boss, ' ' or the un- 
due interference and dictation on educational mat- 
ters, of the corporations or boards of trustees, who 
have their financial affairs in charge. I have not 
the least doubt that if this were done the country 
over, in a reasonable, firm, intelligent and united 
way, the profession would greatly gain in its per- 
sonnel, and in its legitimate influence ; and that the 
whole cause of the nation's system of education 
would be greatly profited thereby. For I am only 
"harking back" to the point from which we set out 
on the trail that we have been following thru this 
entire course of lectures, when I remind you that 
it is personal character, and the ethics of personal 
intercourse, that furnishes all the principal prob- 
lems, as well as the most feasible solution of them 
all, however many and great they may be, as con- 
nected with our national system of education. 

And, finally, fellow teachers, never let down your 
ideals. But remember, an ideal is always some- 
thing beyond present attainments; a something 
never quite realized. That is its nature and the 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 331 

source of its value as an ideal. It must, then, not 
be lowered or abandoned, but pursued with pa^ 
tienee and steadfastness and itself constantly be 
clarified and improved. 



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